Removed the headliner
The car has a sunroof and that's got to be addressed. For one thing, at the track my helmet was touching the liner. A race seat should be lower but I'm not sure it'll be low enough. Also, the sunroof parts add weight in the top of the car. Maybe it's not critical but, in combination, I want it removed.
Getting the headliner out was a long process. The trick with the liner for a sunroof car is that the sunroof has to be open to release it from the opening. What I read didn't make sense until I saw it. When the liner is installed, the vinyl at the opening is wrapped back into the top of the opening and then glued and clamped down. It's really held quite strongly. About an inch of material goes under the rails for the sunroof itself and under trim pieces at the front and back. Gotta remove 17 screws.
Getting the sunroof open took a while. The motor worked but didn't have the torque to move the mechanisms. For a while, I turned the coupler between the motor and gearbox by hand. Slow! The winning approach was to use a power drill to turn the gearbox. I use a right-angle adapter (in pic) to gain space. I was concerned that the higher torque would strip the gears or cables but, working gently, it started moving quickly enough and opened. I'm planning to lube the rails and make it work normally. It's getting cool and rainy here.
The first pic show the underside of the roof with the headliner removed. I wondered if is was workable to cut off the support for the sunroof and weld up the hole. I'll look again but I'm thinking to cut out most of the roof and put in the sheetmetal from the roof of a non-sunroof car.
Second pic shows the donor. I cut it off a 928 when parting it a couple of years ago. It's waiting the the garage rafters, along with a tan liner. If shows the simple structure of the roof without sunroof: just a sheet of metal. The frame around the outside looks to be the same.
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1980 928S Euro x2
1987 944 N/A
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