Apparently, from my research, there is an inner roof brace as well as the outer finish panel/brace (the black one that you see). Apparently these are spot welded together? I was wondering if theses two braces can be installed into the car as a unit or if you have to drill them apart? I was just thinking, i can't see them installing them separate, welding them and them painting it in the car when they did these conversions (maybe i am wrong though?).

And how is the inner brace attached to the the car, welded or riveted?

thanks.

 

They are riveted to the car.

 

It's really just one piece, the middle t-top bar. It's sort of H-shaped, it extends out to both sides of the car. This is what it looks like with the headliner removed:

 

very nice gta seats you have there. But what happened with the headliner?did someone try and reattach it with spray glue or something, whats all over the roof?

 

The C&C headliners suck... mine was glued to the roof.

 

Yeah, mine was too. All of that gunk everywhere is what's left of it. I pretty much had to destroy it to get it out.

 

so having never had to remove a headliner before, can you educate me here: from what i understand the t-top cars (factory came with a headliner that had a cardboard template with material stretched over it. What about hardtops? Mine feels like it has foam behind it for sure....is there a hard template for those as well or are they just against the roof supports (i would think there must be something otherwise you would feel the shape of the supports through it)?

And you are saying the c&c one is just material glued to the roof? What about in the t-top area, how does it meet? Does it come around and under the weatherstripping?

thanks.

 

It's done differently for the factory t-top cars and the aftermarket ones. Also, the factory t-top boards (including the ABS ones) won't fit aftermarket t-tops. The "headliner board" isn't really like cardboard, but a soft fiber board, like the flame-retardant thing on the bottom of the hood. On hardtop cars, it's not glued to anything, the a-pillar trim, sunvisors, domelight, and rear plastic trim hold it up. However, on the t-top cars, it's glued to the roof. You can see from my picture how much of it was glued in, pretty much all of it. There probably won't be any way to get it out in one piece either. I tried my best, but it pretty much fell apart as I was taking it out. I found that an old license plate works well as a scraper, to get between the headliner and the car roof.

The part that took a while was around the t-top openings. You'll see a plastic C-channel thing, that wraps around the inside of the opening. Pull that off, and you can see how the fabric is glued around the opening. Just take your time peeling it off, it's not much fun though.

 

The thing is i don't have them right now (or access to a car with the C&C setup). I am actually researchin what all would be required if i were to swap a setup in. So the edges of the material just get glued to the metal t-bar brace and then you put this c-channel rubber over the edges of the opening to hide it and finish it off nice? Any pics?

 

IIRC the conversion is just riveted in, my headliner wasn't glued down like shown above. It was sagging where it is is supposed to wrap around the metal but when I recovered mine I didn't reattach it to the metal.

 

The actual unit is riveted in, yes. Although that might differ since the CnC installs were done by many different shops, which may have used widely varying techniques.

Ward, your shop looks like they went a little nuts with the spray glue. The dips***s who did the install in my car seemed to have severe problems holding drills and rivet guns perpendicular to the surface of the roof.