Does anyone have any experience with a wool headliner from Spruce? I've considered making one myself, but for the price, I think I'd rather just buy one...

I do not have any experance with the Aircraft Spruce wool headliner. I did replace my original old stained wool liner with a new soft vinyl one from Maule. It fit like a glove and when dirty it wipes clean easily. I don't remember it being very expensive. For me the wool is too easy to get dirty and too hard to clean.

I installed an Aircraft Spruce Liner. It came out amazingly good except for the very back where it meets the snap on access cover. Seems the pattern they have is a touch narrow. But you likely wouldn’t know if you looked at mine. Kinda one of those things you wouldn’t notice unless you did it yourself.

Buy new bows if yours are bent or rusty
Consider leaving it out all together if you are going the bush route
Consider raising the bows some of you are taller

Easy to install. Discard the discoloration on the back, that’s water sprayed on to shrink the liner after install.

I see they say they have one for an M4 and M5, any ideas of the M5 one would work for an MX-7? Yours looks fantastic, Mog!

norcal64d wrote: ↑

Sat Aug 07, 2021 2:38 pm

I see they say they have one for an M4 and M5, any ideas of the M5 one would work for an MX-7? Yours looks fantastic, Mog!

My guess is that it would, but it’s only that.

I believe the MX-7 should have one bow that is bent to hold the headliner lower under the flap torque tube sprocket, but if re-using your bows, I doubt that’d necessitate a difference in the material. My M-6 has that bend in the bow, and I believe the M-6 and MX-7 are the same fuselage.

When I was thinking of putting a new headliner in my M-6, I called Spruce and asked if they could make one for it. They said that if I sent them my old one, they would use it as a pattern to make me a new one, and would be able to offer them to others for the M-6 after that. You might call and suggest that for yours.

I ordered a tan wool headliner from Spruce on December 20, 2020 for my M5. The price was definitely right compared to Maule. I received it March 24, 2021. When I laid it out with the old headliner, it was clear that Spruce had cut two of the rear panels that aren't symmetric with the fabric upside down. When they sewed them into position with the fabric right side up, the cargo door side was long and the window side short. After waiting so long for the headliner, I wasn't about to return it for a redo. I talked to Spruce and they gave me a partial refund. I took the headliner to a seamstress friend with the two yards of extra headliner fabric I had bought, and she was able to replace the wrong panels.
What would I do differently? If the old headliner is intact, it's a perfectly good template for a seamstress or upholstery shop to make a new one. The extra headliner fabric that I bought from Spruce was exactly the same fabric that they sewed the ordered headliner from. I would buy the fabric from Spruce and take the old headliner to a seamstress and have them duplicate it. It certainly wont be as cheap as Spruce, but you will probably get it sooner, it will fit better, and it will be substantially cheaper than Maule.
If you order from Spruce, don't expect a lot of extra fabric. Beside the wrong panels, the headliner was tight in a couple other areas.

Thanks for the input everyone.

I thought I had heard some stories somewhere of them not being the best fit, but Mog, yours looks really nice! My Stinson had a pretty mint wool headliner, and I don't know why, but it just made the interior feel "complete". I didn't really care for the fabric that the original (to me anyway) headliner in my M4 was made out of.

I had also given some thought to using the old one as a pattern and making the new one myself. I don't think it would be tough (I have a shop full of industrial sewing machines), but it's more a matter of having too many jobs at the moment. But if it's going to take 3 months to get one from Spruce... It's probably worth a call to see what their current production time for one is.