Finding Skeletons in Your Closet or How to Remove the Boot Lid Liner on Mecedes SL R129

The boot of a Mercedes R129 SL is covered in liner from all sides, including the lid. If you want to get it off, as we did, it's not immediately obvious where to start, as you can't really see what's holding it in place from the outside. This is how the liner looks from the outside (albeit after we got it off, forgot to take the 'before' photo):

I spent a lot of time trying to google for a tutorial on how to remove the boot lid liner, but the best advice there is is to pull. So we decided to go ahead and do just that. 

Before you start, remove the warning triangle and the knob that switches off the boot light. At first we though that the 2 screws located in the centre of the lid would need to be removed, but they have nothing to do with the liner, it will simply slide out from underneath.

Then carefully start to pull the lid cover towards you. We started at the bottom near the metal parts that open and close the lid. The lid is held in place by plastic poppers:

Looking at this it may seem that you should try to slide the grey bits out of the black ones, but that wasn't the case. We just pulled and the grey poppers came out of the boot lid. Be careful when you pull though, as I have read about the black holders breaking off. We were lucky, and none of ours broke, so all the poppers and black holders are intact.

This is what the boot lid cover looks like from the back, so you can see how many poppers there are and their locations:

Now if you were hoping that once you remove the boot lid liner, you would get easy access to the third brake light, think again. The boot is covered from the inside by a metal skeleton thing (don't know what's a better way of calling it) that by the looks of it cannot be removed and makes accessing the third brake light as well as the GPS receiver (if you have one) a nightmare. This is what the boot lid looks like with the liner off:

You can just only see a small part of the third brake light that's relatively easily accessible. For the rest of the light you will have to navigate a set of holes that don't give you much access at all.