So I want to put a steel roof on. I haven't decided if I'm going to order wood bows, or fab up steel ones. I'm looking for advice, and input.
We have done it both ways but I prefer wood if it is visable. If your putting in a headliner it doesn't matter.
it's a coupe. I do plan on installing a headliner (at some time). I am not sure if I can weld the skin in with the wood. And isn't each bow different? Now if I was going to use steel, I thought of using channel for the front bow, and square tube for the mid ones. does anyone have a template for the bows?
It's not an A, and it's not a coupe. But it's an old car, and here is how I did it. Starting at the front match your original curve with your new material and then do the same for the rear area. Then for the center bows just lightly bend your square tubing so they a familiar to the front and rear starting points. With your coupe, the bows wont be to sharp of a bend. Just make them flow off of the side portion of you roof. Not to flat and not to much of a curve. And you should be good to go. ..John
ahh..ok if it was a Tudor..i could have directed you to drawings for the wood..on the A group community pages I'll send you there anyways..never know something there for everyone..maybe something there for you too. http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/group.php?do=discuss&group=&discussionid=350
Nice job on the roof struts Ghost....so you bent them instead of pie cutting them. If I could find some wood ones I could copy them, I'll keep plugging along
When we did the roof on our A we put the wood bows in (wood kit we purchased) and used foam adhesive tape (like weatherstripping) on top of the bows. we used the foam to keep the steel filler roof from squeaking or rattling. we glued it in place. yes I said glued. we used two part automotive panel adhesive. this worked very well, has shown no signs of coming apart, it is extremely solid. I can send or post more pics if you would like to see anything in more detail. the steel roof skin we used is from a 1981 malibu 4 dr sedan. seemed to fit the compound curve both ways without too much crown. the inside finished after installation. painted before we installed it so the bows look clean. during fitting, must have trimmed it 50 times to make it fit right during the fitting process. skin is held in place by 3 cleco pins to make sure it is in the same place everytime. not trimmed to final size in this pic. couple of shots of the roof outside in the sun. the green stuff in the 2 part epoxy. no welds = no warpage, charred wood etc. we think the skin fits extremely well.
Toner, this is what I'm looking for. Thanks for sharing the pics. If you have more pics by all means I'm interested. Did the wood kit come wth all of the hardware? I'll have to start checking the wreckers for Malibu sedans. Cheers and beers
I am in St. Thomas, Ontario and am building a 1931 Ford coupe. When I got it there was no wood left in it except a few splinters. The body was twisted badly but it is now fairly straight and I hsve stiffened it up. What would you recommend I do to glue a steel roof into the opening. I can send pics if that would help. Fred Frew Fdrew1946@ gmail.com
Does your car still have the original stamped tack strip holes and channel around the roof opening? On our Coupe we overlapped that tack strip channel with the donor steel roof. IIRC, a bit of hammer and dolly work on that raised rib beside the track strip holes got the roof skin fit very nicely. Made for a nice smooth transition from donor roof skin to original Henry steel. After having the donor roof skin on and off the car test fitting it I don't even know how many times and being happy with the way it was fitting, that's when we used the panel bond glue in that tack strip channel to glue the donor roof skin down. Our car had the original Henry wood in most of it. I think there were two small pieces we had to replace but other than that it is original wood in the car. So in our case, the wood acted as a backing below the tack strip holes to keep the glue from dripping into the car. In your case with no wood there you may have to put tape or something temporarily on the bottom side to keep the glue from dripping into the car. That panel Bond adhesive is rock-hard once it cures and very difficult to remove. When we set the donor roof skin in place, there was some extra adhesive that squeezed out through the slight gaps between original Henry steel and donor roof skin. These were carefully trimmed away before the glue fully cured. It also helped to fill in the slight transition between donor skin and original steel as well. A little bit of bodywork and a little bit of primer and it looks like the roof was stamped as one piece. Which after all, was the goal. I was very skeptical at first of the two-part panel bond adhesive. However, after having talked to several friends in the Autobody industry who swore by the stuff we gave it a shot. Happy to report that 12 years on, there has been no bubbling, no separation and no issues after several thousand miles of road use. I would not hesitate to use the stuff again.
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