Back
Hot Car - Technical: Fiesta Sunroof Fitting
"Flip Top. Ian Wearing fits a new tinted lid"
June 1978
Next

 

 

Home » Magazine Articles » British UK » Hot Car »

Technical: Fiesta Sunroof Fitting




Hot Car - Technical: Fiesta Sunroof Fitting - Front Cover

Hot Car - Technical: Fiesta Sunroof Fitting - Page 1

Hot Car - Technical: Fiesta Sunroof Fitting - Page 2

Hot Car - Technical: Fiesta Sunroof Fitting - Page 2

Copy of Article Text Below


Flip Top

Ian Wearing fits a new tinted lid


Do-it-yourself sunroofs have come - and gone. The public want them, the manu acturers love to sell them but, for some reason, they just don't seem to work.

Why? Well, it appears that good old Joe Public is not fantastically good at cutting ruddy great holes in the roof and doing all the intricate little bits and pieces that are needed to successfully fit a sun roof.

Enter, Slideaway Roofs Ltd., This Birmingham based company have just launched three different sun roofs all designed for simple DIY fitting. There's one called the Fab/ite which is a fold back fabric roof with no headlining at just £40, a tinted flip-up glass roof panel called the Sunportai £50 and a posher version, the Skyport, at £70. All these can be fitted at a cost of £15 if you aren't ace with your pandies.

We opted to try the Skyport and see how much aggro was involved in fitting it to a Ford Fiesta. At the same time, we fitted a vinyl roof - not using a kit but just a length of vinyl and some glue.

The secret of the Skyport's easy fitting is that it comes complete with a rigid frame and so doesn't require any roof strengthening - unlike most sunroofs which need bracing before you actually make the frame up in-situ. It consists of a curved sheet of toughened glass that has been titanium sprayed to reflect heat - a sort of bronze effect-so's you don't fry in summer. This glass panel is hinged at the front and has two over-centre catches at the rear. The frame is in two pieces - a polished aluminium surround fits on top of the roof and a pressed steel section fits inside the car and is screwed directly to the ally frame thus clamping the roof in between. A rubber seal between ally frame and glass panel keeps the top water tight and a mastic layer between frame and roof does the same job there.

Fitting really gave us no trouble at all - apart from the heart attack as we made the first incision in the roof!

First trick was to cut a template marked on the cardboard packet and check it with the Skyport to see that it was right. This was then plonked on the car roof and moved around to find the best position. One of the headlining cross braces was going to have to come out as it crossed just where the roof was going and so it was important to position the 'port so that it came roughly in between the front of the car roof and the second headlining rail - the lining would eventually be held around the port aperture by the frame.

It ended up with the front edge of the port about 8" back from the windscreen. A line was then drawn round the template indicating the metal to be removed.

Next step was to remove the offending headlining support rail (list rail). With the lining still in position, the only way to do this was to hacksaw through the rail at the end having first pulled back the door sealing strip which holds the lining at the edges. We just managed to get a junior hacksaw in the space available.

If you have a loose headlining like on the Fiesta, then steps must be taken to ensure that it is held clear of the roof so that the jigsaw blade doesn't touch it when you make the cut. 0n the other hand, if you have a solid lining, you can cut this at the same time as the roof.

To get the necessary space between roof and lining on our car, we packed balls of paper around the edges of the panel to be cut. These were pushed in from the side of the headlining.

Clearance holes were then cut for the jigsaw blade at the corners of the panel to be cut out, and, with a helper steadying the panel, the saw was run along the line and the panel cut out. We didn't have to worry about scratching the roof with the jigsaw shoe because a vinyl roof was going on too, if we had been worried, the area just outside the panel would have been first covered with masking tape.

The pictures tell the rest of the story but one thing is most important, vacuum out all the bits of swarf from theheadliningsas these will rust in time and make brown stains - nasty!

Fitting the vinyl roof was no great problem. We got the material from Keith Hawbone at Rawbone Glass in North Harrow (01-863 8229) and no stitching was necessary because one width of material was wide enough for the roof and we weren't going down the rear pillars. So, around 1½ yards of Tobacco brown vinyl did the trick. Dunlop adhesive was used, code number 1358. It's like Evostick to use.

You'll need two people to stick the leathercloth on, don't stretch it more than is necessary because it will tend to shrink back in time. Just pull it enough to get rid of the wrinkles andnegotiate any curves on the roof.

Where the material was fitted up under the tailgate top frame, it had to have V cuts made on the concave bits. If you take the edges a bit at a time, it all goes very easily but you have to work reasonably quickly so the glue doesn't dry out too much. Keep the glue layer thin or it will tend to show under the cloth and not stick well either.

Our only slight trouble came at the end when the panel was finally screwed up. The mastic strip used to seal the roof was squeezed up and the exess had to be cut away. But, the mastic was so rubbery and tricky to cut that it wasn't easy to make a tidy result.

In operation, the roof is fine giving a light interior to the car on the darkest of days. The heat of the sun is no problem, at least at this time of the year it isn't, and the Skyport doesn't create any wind noise when shut and hardly any when opened. It does leak at the moment round one of the hinges but this should be no trouble to seal.

To sum up, a nice product and, on the Fiesta at least, very easy to fit. Slideaway Sunroofs are at Tyburn Trading Estate, Ashold Farm Road, Erdington, Birmingham. Tel: 021-3738161.

Captions - From Left to Right

- Once the material was pushed well down into the gutter the excess could be trimmed flush with the top using a very sharp scalpel
- A roll of mastic was provided which was pressed in a moulding on the roof frame to form a seal between the frame and the roof
- Than the complete panel was dropped in from the top. You can see here the four chrome bolts for the hinges and the catches
- Finally, the lower frame was screwed up into the top frame which tightly sandwiched the roof panel squeezing the mastic out