BC

I am 6'3" and have a higher amount of Torso. Its the box up there, plus the liner. So its not nearly enough unless I do a racing seat AND remove that box. I have cut before, but I would rather do the skin this time i think. It looks slimpler.

Lizard928

I removed mine and put a small panel over top like you saw on the pic of John D. car.

However I used a silicon and riveted it on, the double sided tape makes it stick up.

As to sharp edges there are NONE, and esp none near my head.

I used a 4.5" zip disc for parts of it, and used an air nibbler (very quick and easy), for most of it.
The inside of mine was definetly cleaner that John's or Tom's cars. But theirs were still livable for a track car.
The other thing to note is that the front of it is simply glued in and once you cut the back off, you can simply pull and tug the rest of the pieces out.

RyanPerrella

nasty edges? What are you talking about? He is talking about cutting out the pressed edges for a sunroof roof and then putting in a formed plate steel and welding it in. THERE WILL BE NO EDGES, if its done correctly (and this is not a hard job for a fabricator) you would never know there was a sunroof in the car.

Sorry, a roto zip is not what i had in mind, thats a hobbist's tool and best left to crafts and small jobs. Thinking that that didnt do it and then jumping all the way to a plasma cutter is like saying driving 1 mile an hour isnt fast enough, so i will instead drive 500 mph.

What i had in mind is either an air shear which leaves very little mess, a small air jigsaw which is very easy to operate and leaves a slightly bigger mess, or a cutoff wheel (that doesn't mean die grinder with cutting disc either). the cutoff wheel will leave shavings all over the place but any of those 3 tools would work perfectly for what you want to do.

Honestly considering you werent aware of those tools, i would maybe suggest you farm this job out. I know my limitations, and cutting out roof's and welding them back in is beyond my abilities at present. Also you would want to get a skilled metal worker to get the correct angle on the sheet steel that will go in the new hole. The bend is very slight but it still needs to be worked and massaged, and if its curved too much or too little it will stick out like a soar thumb and look terrible.

Benton

Ryan,
I did this job, and I know what is up there. If it is a race car with no headliner, as I said, I don't want that junk up there. Even if you could get every last bit out, you can see the sunroof panel welded in or the other panel welded in. That's not what I wanted. I'm not getting on anyone else that did it. There is no way to do this seamlessly without replacing the roof.

You have these wonderful dreamy ideas of how to form things or how a "fabricator" would perform them. There's not a magic "fabricator" that can work miracles on things. It's simple: all this crap you talk about doing (forming a steel plate, removing all of the rails, etc.) would take WAY more time and effort than just drilling out the spot welds and replacing the roof. I probably had about 8 hours of work on my roof.

Fabio421

If you are going to remove the steel skin anyway, why not replace it with sheet aluminum? It would accomplish the weight saving as well as get rid of the sunroof hole all at once. It should also keep the cage from digging in as Jim suggested. I would think that you would be able to follow the curve of the roof frame to get the proper shape. As for attachement, there are some very good adhesives that could be used in conjunction with rivets or button head fasteners. You would need someone to brake the edges and that contour on the front would have to be stamped. You may be able to work around this by leaving the edge of the steel roof in place and tying into it just past the edge. It won't look as clean as a welded in skin but for a race car it will look purposefull.

The CF roof would be cool and a little lighter. It could be attached the same way as described above. But CF tends to splinter when impacted and would be more expensive and labor intensive than the aluminum sheet metal. If you do decide to go this route, a mold from a non sunroof car would be take the least time. DanglerB has at least one in So. Cal. that he may allow you to mold from. As to Brendans comment about Carl making it look easy, thats true, to the untrained eye. There were alot of hours in between all of those pics. The prep time is what takes forever. Thats why I suggest starting with the non sunroof car in the first place. It will cut down on the prep time quite a bit.

Carl Fausett

+1

Fabio421

Wow. Thanks Carl. That means alot coming from you.

Jim bailey - 928 International

I have not yet figured out how to weld aluminum sheet to steel which makes it very hard to make it much more than a glued and riveted on patch..... There are a hundred other places to drop weight but if serious about it the weight is ALSO in the "Factory roll cage" the A and B pillars as well as the boxed top of windshield and hatch mount crossmember . Just go look at IMCA modifieds and you see how little "body" is needed When we get in a none sunroof car we can cut off the top....Dwayne got one not long ago. The roof is a compound curve which makes it hard to simply attach a flat sheet of anything to it and retain the shape.... If anyone thinks fabrication is easy try making a 6 inch x 8 inch by 4 inch sheet metal box ....let me know how that turns out Now make it half steel , 1/4 alluminum, and 1/4 carbon fiber !

Tom. M

Just an aside from all the cutting and stuff....looks like someone with good body work skills could fabricate a clear plexiglass panel (slightly gray tinted) to replace a big part of the roof skin that would make a nice 993 "glass roof" look for the 928. This would replace that vestigal organ of a mail slot Porsche called a sunroof. Custom headliner and viola...you've got some serious light in the 928 cabin...

You could even mold in some "speed humps" like the Viper for that racy look..

Lizard928

Jim, it is actually possible to "weld" aluminum and steel together with a tig machine. The weld will never have the full strenth of either parent metal though and is more of a braze.

RyanPerrella

Mark,

I agree removing the roof and replacing is the easiest thing and will give you the greatest results.

My suggestion was made under the general agreement that there are NO non sunroof panels available to purchase used or new. You could get one from a donor car (an early model most likely) but that involves some hunting, but you could probably find one......eventually.


And im with Jim on the Aluminum roof. How are you going to properly bond the steel to the aluminum?

Listen, look at the dimensions of the roof panel itself. This is not the roof off a family sedan or somethin, the 928 roof is probably one of the smallest roof's ever put on a porsche in that 1/4 to 1/3 of the roof itself it made up of the top portion of the hatch. The actual roof skin you would be replacing is such a small piece that anything but steel would end up weighing more due to the fact that you would have to reinforce the roof so much with some other material like CF or Aluminum that the net weight saving would be nothing and you would end up with likely a heaver roof, attached in an odd one off manner, and the car would likely loose allot of rigidity as a result. So i dont see why you would bother trying to reinvent this wheel here guys. This honestly to me seems like dream land.

The original idea spawned from Carls one piece clip, but that clip is not a structural part of the car AT ALL. The fenders and hood and bumper are just bold on parts and just cosmetic so your not really hurting the cars dynamics in anyway by doing this. (They are also aluminum, so i don't really understand why you would replace them anyway but thats another story)

PorKen

I would like to replace the entire hatch with a sheet of plexi (with an internal alloy frame). Doing the roof would be interesting, too!



At least your race car will look fast...

belgiumbarry

TRICLAD ! it's a common used material on ships to weld the steel hull on a aluminium deck... it's formed by "explosion" and holds a steel strip to a aluminium strip by "pression", so hard together it's bonded on molecule dimension.... just don't know if it exist in those thin sheet thickness... sure for ships , but that's more around 10 mms... so you have a "steel" side to weld and a aluminium one !

Tom. M

The whole top and hatch made of plexi would look cool...but be a bear to have in the hot summers..not that it would be problem up here in the Pac NW....

So..when are you coming out to the track...would love to see how my totally stock 82 would do up against a vicious heavily Porkensified 86.5 maybe I could follow you around a bit and catch some pointers as you lap me time and time again

Fabio421

Um... guys. Reading is fundamental.

And Ryan, with all due respect, you are talking out of your @$$ here. We are talking about track cars here not concourse queens. You would not be adding any weight. And you would not lose any structural integrity, especially since the car will have a cage.