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Headliner Zippers

Richard Elliott

Member III
I'll never understand why yacht manufacturers use aluminum zipper slides on boats intended for salt water. However, a fellow in Ashland, Oregon sells an excellent repair kit with plastic slides. A small slit is cut at the end of the zipper, a new plastic slide fed onto it and the end of the zipper reclosed with a supplied S.S. clamp.
 

P Abele

Member II
I agree with Tom's comments about buying your own zipper slides, although you may need to do some searching around fabric stores to find the right zipper slides for this (I'm pretty sure a #5 is correct). I wanted to share a couple of things I learned in finally fixing one on our boat earlier this year:

There are two types of zippers which have different types of slides. You want slides for a "coil type" zipper if your headliner is like ours in our E33.

Once I got the slide, it was a battle to get it started in the zipper. The teeth just didn't want to mesh until I tried something - I sprayed the teeth with silicone spray and the ziper practically jumped together on the first try!

I bought some curved needles to sew the end shut once the zipper was in place.

In all, it was an inexpensive but very aggravating job to replace this zipper slide but should be a whole lot easier if one of these quits again in the future.
 

Filkee

Sustaining Member
Headline: Zippers Can Be Saved

I second the fabric store tip. I think I spent all of 75 cents on a handful. The trick is a sharp blade and good glasses. My frustration with not being able to see was the biggest obstacle to getting this done. I still have more to go, but now I know it's possible.
 
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