Skinning the roof P1

With the sun starting to appear and shine down on us and all my friends driving around in some very nice minis it really makes me want to finish this car and get it on the road. With that in mind I took the decision to work on my own in the unit so I have no distractions.

My aim was to pin the roof skin in place and also finish most of the grinding on the welds. however I could only grind them so far back because I had ran out of flap disks to achieve a good finish, never mind, something to do later.

Sat in the car with my angle grinder I started to smooth the welds back and tidy them up, I had been leaving this because I am not overly keen with the way the sparks seam to attack me within the car bouncing off the metal work back to me. After a short time I had the pillars ground back as far as I was willing to go with the coarse grinding disc, then to protect the metal work I gave it a quick coat of primer, this will be removed when I go over the metal work again to smooth it out with a flap disc.

With the majority of the grinding finished within the car and the majority of the body work finished I decided to go ahead and start placing the segments of the roof skin on the car. Using what I though was my large collection of mole grips I held the skin in place. As it happens I actually need many more grips...

With the roof skin held in place I then moved over to the spare roof skin. I have been advised on several ways to make the new roof, from filling the sections to building a glass fibre roof. The chosen method I have decided to go with is taking the main section of another roof and placing it in the centre and then filling the small areas, its still hours and hours of work but I think the roof skin will indeed keep its shape better this way.
With the plan firmly in my head I marked out the spare roof in the least curved section to keep the job simple or at least as simple as it can be.

I then proceeded to cut the panel out and then offer it on to the car, with it on the car I then marked out the sections and cut them to the same size and the panel.

 Once cut I used some nifty little holding devices call inter grips, I was advised to try them from an ex collogue and they are wonderful, I just underestimated how many I actually needed so in some of the photos the roof is still sagging. Not a huge issue because I still have a lot of moving about to get it perfect and I will order lots more of the grips to keep the skin in place. The strap is in the pictures because I ran out of inter grips...

Next I will be placing the skin on the roof for a perfect fit and will start to spot weld the skin together.
Until then take it easy.