Roof Panel

    — TMR

    That 75 pound electric sun roof just had to go.  Without a nice roof panel, to use as a replacement, the only solution is to fit in sheet metal to close up the hole.  Just to make things a little more challenging, the instalation of the sun roof, caused a fair amount of distortion and stretching of the roof panel at the rear corners.  All I can do is shrink, stretch, pick and dolly as required.

    Here you can see a salvaged roof panel out of a Ford Pickup to fill in the opening left by the sun roof.  It does a pretty good job of matching the curvature of the XJ-S roof line.  Simplest solution for fitting, is to lay the panel over the opening, position for the best fit, and trace out the opening onto the panel with a felt tip pen.

     For some undetermined reason that eludes me now, I thought I should do a butt weld, rather than using the bead roller and flanging the edge to create an easy to weld overlap that would give a nice neat appearance on the inside (what the hell was I thinking)  Then, to add a little icing on the cake, get some dufus to cut it out, and end up on the wrong side of the line creating a nice little gap to close up.. Oh Wait.. That dufus would be me!  Well, we all have our bad days.. (That’s my story and I’m sticking to it)

     No sense whining about it.. Can’t be undone.  Get the panel fitted into position and held by panel clamps ready for welding.  You’ll notice the 1/16″ welding rod, laid into the gap between the panel and the roof where required to give something to weld to. (grrr)

     I only have one set of hands, and this job can easily use more.  So, I have a telescopic jack that I use to support the joint from the interior side, while I weld on the top side.  I’ve placed a slab of aluminium on top of the jack pad to act as a heat sink, dolly and support for the weld area.  This greatly assists, especially in those gap areas, to hold the material in place.

     Weld in short sections, no more than an inch, then move to a different location for the next bit of welding.  You do this to minimize the heat on the metal, to keep warping under control.  On those gap sections, you have to do short 1 second zaps, let the metal flash off, then do it again and repeat the process as required.

     Lots of grinding, lots of dolly work.  Then, re-weld the sections that have been broken with the stress that has been placed on them.  Stretch, dolly, shrink, dolly, and VOILA you have a normal roof again.