Sunroof clip transfer

[BillWilliams]

Revvin Evan is working on a sunroof transfer. The spot weld air drill with a 6.5 bit is the cat's meow. He did the 100 or so spot welds on the windshield opening in 20 minutes.

I know, he did not have to drill all the way to the bottom and he had on his invisible safety glasses.

He is following the McGinn boys method with coaching from Mike Pugh and Bill Riblett.

I just realized I instructed him to do this incorrectly but I think it is salvagable. We re-read the McGinn procedure and it instructs to drill the DONOR skin from the underside. So, we can do the rest the correct way and will have to grind the welds on the windsheild down flush.

Here is a copy of the McGinn procedure:

On your car, leave the structure intact. Dont do the method of just sawza'lling the whole roof and support pillars. THat method is for gorillas. This results in needless extra fitting, measuring and messing around. If you follow the method I outline below, you will get guaranteed perfect results and glass that does not leak, etc. The whole rationale behind it is that the support structures of sunroof and non sunroof cars are largely the same, so why disturb what does not need to be disturbed and comprimise the integrity of the car? (though we did build door braces to hold the car while the skin is off to ensure that it did not move...) Basically what you'll end up doing is swapping the roof skin only.

If you look in the drip rail you will see the factory spot welds that hold the skin to the structure. Drill through these welds--but only the outer skin just to the support structure. Remove the factory lead at the C-pillar seam with a acetlyene torch with a warm flame. (this seam runs directly in line with the drip rail at the back top of the c-pillar. The factory butchered this weld seam and leaded it. Cut the weld, taking care not to cut through the support. In the A-pillar you will need to make a non-factory cut and seam weld. Do this right across the upper corner of the windshield...

You also need to drill out the welds that hold the skin to the front and rear upper windshield frames.

The key with the donor clip is to make sure that you get enough of the parts you need...ie: you need the entire skin, sunroof panel and all attendant tracks, slides, etc. Make sure whoever cuts it gives you about 2" down each of the pillars. Prepping the donor clip is pretty much a reversal of prepping the car--ie: drill the spotwelds from the underside, taking care not to drill through your replacement skin.

You'll need to also cut off the sunroof pan support brackets from the inner roof support.

Once you've got the roof prepped, then you can start fitting it to the car...the trickiest part is fitting it on the A-pillar because its the only non-factory weld line. You will also need to carefully bend out the support tabs for the roof pan...

WElding the new roof on can be done one of two ways. You can drill the donor clip every few inches along the driprail and plug weld it, but this creates distortion on the skin that will have to be repaired. Alternately what we do is to spot weld the skin on sinking each weld on one of the old factory welds. This works well and does not distort the skin any more than what the factory did.

We've done about three 2002's and one e9 in the last year and a half using this method, and although it is time consuming, the exercise is more one of patience, thought and precision rather than brute force and fitting. It honestly can be done by one person as the roof skin is light and will really only fit correctly one way due to the interference nature of the fit. Done correctly, this method will yield a sunroof installtion that is absolutely indistinguishable from the factory.

[winstontj]

Wish someone would 'show me how' to do that on my car....

I have a 75 electric sunroof sitting all by it's lonesome - would LOVE two sunroof cars!

[BillWilliams]

start a blog.

Evan is taking both clips off, Mike Hannigan is welding the sunroof on the non-sunroof car. Evan may do it under Mike's tutulidge if he will agree

[TBBMW]

Hey! My 75 Polaris project has an electric sunroof too!

[TBBMW]

Hey! My 75 Polaris project has an electric sunroof too!

[jerry]

do you think a garden variety 3HP compressor with 20 gallon tank would be sufficient to power that spot weld cutter?

[BillWilliams]

He drills until the compressor sounds like it needs a rest, then he seperates with the chisel what he drilled. Then we talk a bit. (He is too young to drink at my house so no beer drinking, just talking)

[mattmcginn]

Dig into that thing Evan! Looking great so far.

Winston-this is doable if you take your car apart and really look at how its built and think a little about how you're going to do it.

This is the weld at the back of the roof you have to cut-the pic is of the left C pillar:

I am cutting the roof off in this shot, you'll notice I am cutting it on the "junk" roof side of the weld-this leaves enough material to dress it back to do a nice butt weld once i drop the new roof on.

Below is a pic of the slice you have to make in the A pillar-I like to make it nice and high: You can also see some of the old skin being peeled off of the structure:

THis car actually had a tree fall on it, so all the pillars were out of alignment, so I had to take selective sections of the substructure from the donor roof:

YOU REALLY CAN DO THIS! Its just a lot of time, not a complex procedure.

Make sure to use plenty of vise grips when you fit that thing back on!

There are more pix here if you like:

http://s94994139.onlinehome.us/gallery/album02