dave krehbiel

Mine was $1800.00, but it was the first 382 that he had done and said it was more difficult that he thought it would be, so I imagine it will be more now. He did a good job though!

PhantomChaos

I'll let you know soon.

eddie

My guy wants $3k to do one, his prices have been great in the past. Must be a nightmare!

C_Spray

Pulled the V-berth panels out to re-cover them. Took about 20 minutes; much easier than the main section.

PhantomChaos

More pics here......

http://www.offshoreonly.com/forums/3827982-post165.html

http://www.offshoreonly.com/forums/3827982-post166.html

poulsen11@yahoo.

For anyone that is having this problem I figured I would add on to this post regarding my experience replacing the headliner in my 382 fastech myself:

First I got a quote from a place in LOTO for $3k to replace it for me, so I decided to do it myself.
I then called formula and bought 27 yds of material from them that was as close to original as they could get. It looked perfect and matched great.

The hardest part is cleaning the old boards that you pull out of the boat that the old headliner was 'attached' to. After a couple of tries I came up with what I consider to be the easiest system to clean the black gunk from those boards after you pull out all the staples and pull the vinyl cover off of them:

Step 1: Use a pressure washer on them - believe it or not that black rubbery gunk stuff washes right off in minutes. Don't bother with any mechanical means, it will take you forever. After pressure washing all that will be left is the residual glue that they used to stick the original foam to the board. It wont damage the boards, just use moderate pressure and don't get too close.
Step 2: Get some Xylene (I went through 3 gallons I think) and wear proper safety equipment and some paper towels. POUR the xylene onto the panels where the glue is and start wiping with paper towels. The paper towels will 'flake' away and you will use a ton of them, but they will also carry the glue away from the surface very easily and when you are done the board will be COMPLETELY clean and ready for recovering.

All of this will make a terrible mess so be sure you are either in an area that you don't care about the mess, or that you put something large and xylene resistant down to catch the mess. Using this method to clean the boards allowed me to clean all 6 boards in about 5 hours. If you tried this using mechanical means (scraper, sander) you would waste countless hours and would not get NEARLY the same cleanliness of the boards. You want those boards CLEAN for when you use your headliner adhesive to attach the new foam material from Formula.

Also don't be afraid to jack up that foredeck to remove the panels. You wont hurt it, just get it out of the way and pull them out!

I hope this helps someone out there someday to do this themselves. The job was not too bad, but it did take me about 22 hours total.

kevlar382

I have helped a friend of mine out with this. The foam that the glue is sprayed on starts to break up because of how old it is. Can't believe people think Formula should stand behind this, the boats are 14-15 years old. I talked to Formula and they gave us a price and said you could bring the boat there or ship the panels there and they will fix them but very costly.
Thank you poulsen11 for your info, very nice of you to take the time to do that.
Another option we thought about is have some light gray Carbon Fiber panels made and replace the wood and vinyl with that. Just a thought right now, have to look into it more. Being that it is a suspended headliner it wouldn't take any strength away from the boat and would save a lot of weight. Again, we have to look into it more, maybe more trouble than it's worth.

kevlar382

It is not bad adheasive, its the foam that it is sprayed on. Foam breaks down with time, these are older boats.

poulsen11@yahoo.

I hear what you are saying about not blaming formula as these are older boats, but in my opinion they definitely have some blame in this. As i disassembled the interior to remove the panels that had the 'black' foam, there were many pieces that were upholstered with a lighter colored foam. This lighter colored foam was in like new condition with no indication of degradation. The foam backed vinyl that i used to replace my headliner also had the lighter colored foam attached to it. Had formula used a lighter colored foam on the headliner, i have a feeling that none of us would be having this problem right now.

That being said i understand that these are older boats and formula was good about cutting the price of the fabric down to wholesale, but given the amount of culpability they have and the amount of effort it takes to fix, i would have expected to get the headliner material for free.

Just my 2 cents.

kevlar382

What else do you own that is 15yrs old and when something goes wrong they give you the parts for free ? What other boat company would do that ? Just wondering. Thanks