Mounting overhead Video units.

I just want to gauge everyone and see how you guys are mounting these big heavy overhead unit's, you know like 8's with built in dvd players and such. The company i just started working for will first cut a slit in the headliner and slid up a 1/4" piece of wood and screw the unit to it, sandwiching the headliner. I figure everyone else for the most part must do something similar, but anyone else have some creative ideas?

A lot of this is common sense just throwing it out there maybe someone will find some use out of it: Without sunroof: First thing would be to try and find a roof beam that you can screw into. If none are available you can sandwich the headliner as mentioned. I prefer to use a piece of 1/2" or 3/4" MDF. If there are no beams and the headliner is too flimsy to support a tv, you might consider bonding a piece of MDF directly to the roof itself using liquid nails or a similar adhesive. Note: Normally this is NOT necessary. We've used this technique maybe once or twice.. With sunroof: Same idea here either a piece of wood on top of the headliner, or screwing into the sunroof beam. Sometimes I try to get a larger piece of wood/metal and shove the back above the rear sunroof motor/beam and secure the front to the beam. A few tips/tricks: - Use anything and everything you can find to your advantage. - Just because you don't have a straight shot on a beam or it's not in the correct location where you want the tv, doesn't mean you can't bracket off of it to strengthen your mount. Every little bit helps.. - When putting wood above the headliner, make sure to screw the wood to the headliner, so it doesn't move around and push up when your trying to screw into it. - Always pull down any domelights in the area first and try to take a look around for any obstructions/wiring harnesses that would make your spot a bad spot for a tv. Once you cut the headliner that's it.. Here's a picture to help show what I mean about bracketing and attaching to the headliner. You'll see the one piece of wood is just screwed to the headliner to keep it from moving around. On the other side you see those two nice beams. Unfortunately those beams didn't go along with where I wanted the tv mounted so I couldn't screw directly into them. Those 2 metal brackets up there stiffen it up plenty. When finished that was a SOLID mount you could almost hang from the damn thing.. Hope it helps, Mike

Almost forgot another scenario. Some sunroof sliders sit rediculously close to the headliner where you really can't have any length of screw going up there. The solution is to come from the top down. The top of a round head screw won't hurt a slider assuming there isn't too much pressure on it. Secure your bolts, raise up the tv, put on some nuts and crank em tight. Another good way to get a rock solid mount. Takes practice to get all your bolts aligned right and the right length so you can raise the tv in place. Another tip: BOLT CUTTERS. Don't take chances of going through the roof with a screw or scratching the sunroof slider. Spend the $10 on some bolt cutters and try and cut screws/bolts to length whenever possible. I've seen a LOT of scratched sunroof sliders.. Customers don't like it! Also when you take out your razor knife to cut the headliner MAKE SURE the sunroof slider is not above you. Always keep it out towards the front of the vehicle. As with the scratches customers also don't like slits in the slider from razor blades.. Go figure.. Mike

nice repsonses dude. so on the second post on putting the bolt through the headline and down how do you keep the bolt fomr spinning when putting the nut on? especially in the case of the sunroof when there is no room. do you just hold the bolt with some vice grips or something? while turning the nut with a open ended wrench? in the case of long bolts like that it would seem to take along time. and yeah i totally know what youre saying about scratching the slider. ive even seen the seal bind up and rip into the material on the slider.. thanks for the input

Yeah if you can't get at it from the top to hold it, you can hold it from the bottom with some pliers or vice grips. The important part is to thread 2 nuts on. The first one as seen in the pic is just to keep the bolt tight in place so that it doesn't spin once you raise up the tv to put on the second nut. Just leave the bolt a little longer than you need it so you can cut the extra off that you messed up with the vice grips. Which is why it's important anytime your cutting a bolt to thread the nut on FIRST before you cut it. It's easy to rethread the cut portion of the bolt by taking the nut off. Starting it fresh on the other hand is a pain. Again you probably won't use this method very often I've only done it a handful of times myself. Not all tv's have space to put a nut on the bottom side because most all are supposed to have screws going up from the bottom. I usually do something like this when there really is no room (volvo xc90 is pretty tight), or when I am fixing an install where the slider was previously scratched. Mike

Ohhh yeah..These pics are pretty self explanatory.. When all else fails, drop it!