State of the Current interior.
For quite some time now I’ve been aware that certain parts of the interior of my Alfa Romeo 155 Q4 have been looking a little tired, a little grubby and in some parts worn and sagging.
The 155 was always criticized for having a rather dark and bland interior, so if I am going to put some time effort and money into refreshing parts of the interior, then I am going to do my best to make it a little more lively, and i bit of a nicer place to be.
So first, a little look at the current state of the parts of the interior that I will be addressing first.
The current Headlining and C-Pillar trim.
The area above the drivers seat has been sagging for a long time now, but is getting worse, the area sagging is getting larger, and getting lower. The pictures make it looks worse than when you are in the car, but its not going to fix itself.
The C-pillar trim piece is not that bad, but lets face it, if I replace the headlining and not these pieces is going to make the interior look like a mess. The fabric was still coming away, but due to where these are located, its not immediately noticeable.
So what makes the fabric of these pieces of trim come away? For a long time I made the assumption that the glue holding up the fabric had come to the end of its life and was failing in its one job of holding the fabric to the plastic backing.
As soon as I started looking at what was going to be required to re-glue or replace the fabric, it became apparent what the real issue was.
Foam not Glue
The real culprit for the detaching of the fabric from the plastic supporting pieces isn’t the glue, its the foam.
Foam backed fabric is great for covering up imperfections and giving a nice smooth flowing finish, however as it ages, in the case of my Q4 and other 155’s the foam can start to disintegrate, and the fabric can find itself being detached from everything.
In the case of the area above the drivers seat, this seems to have been accelerated by a head coming into contact with the headlining , but even those areas not being regularly pressed or moved, the foam has still come to the end of its life.
The Teardown
Unlike most jobs on the Q4, everything came apart easily and it was relatively straightforward to see what needed to be disassembled and in what order to be able to release the rear C-Pillar trim panels.
You do have to bite the bullet and remove quite a lot of the rear of the car before getting to the panels, but it all came apart, and more importantly, came apart without breaking.
There was a mystery cable found along the way, really not sure what it was for, it looks like a coax cable, similar to an aerial cable, but seeing as the original aerial for the 155 radio is incorporated into the heating element of the rear window and the coax cable that goes to the control box is still in place, I’m not sure what this one is, or was for. As at some point in its life, and given the corrosion not recently, it has been cut.
Cleaning up of the bolt that holds the outer, lower rear seatbelt fixing point in place is necessary as the threaded portion of this bolt extends down into the wheel arch area. Working back and forth after the application of a wire brush and WD-40 saw the bolt extracted without cursing or issues beyond a bit or sweat.
So with the seatbelt threaded out through the trim panel, the rear parcel shelf removed exposing a mounting screw, and the outer wheel arch trim panel loosened to get access to the remaining hidden screw. The panel clips could be teased out and the panel removed in one piece.
Getting the panel out of the car meant that all that was left to do was remove the surprisingly metal guide that the seatbelt runs through. Being metal mean that this was just a case of gently bending a few tabs back, then extracting the guide, no risk of snapping a delicate, brittle plastic piece for once.
With the panel out, removing was fabric that is going to be replaced was simple, so simple in fact that half of it fell away from the panel with hardly any persuasion. The rest was removed with just a little more of a pull.
The old fabric is being stored to provide a template for the replacement covering, with the panel itself being firstly brushed off to remove the disintegrating foam, them cleaned carefully with alcohol to remove any glue residue.
For once a job on the Q4 has gone mostly to plan, no additional breakages, and only a couple of surprises.
Its now just a case of waiting for the new covering to arrive, and seeing just how difficult this interior stuff really is.
