Autopower Rollbar - Install phase II
After jacking up the car and removing the inner fender well access to the body where the rear supports bolt down was very good. The cover is easy to remove with only 4 10mm bolts and no wrestling required to remove it.
This is the drive side after drilling from the bottom and bolting together with the backing plate. Access with the drill was a little frustrating with the brake lines below the area where I was drilling but it was not a really big deal. Just be careful not to nick a brake line with the drill motor!
Arg. This side sucked. It turned out the one of the three holes drilled in the mounting plate aligned perfectly with the edge of a wirin harness hole! As you can see I had to cut the corner out of the backing plate and then drill a new hole (from the bottom, not enough access inside the car) into the backing plate on the rollbar. I didn't want to install it with only two of the three bolts. It has three holes, must be a reason for that, best not take a shortcut on saftey equipment! It bolted down nice and tight once I was done wrecking two drill bits to make the hole (what is that bar made of!??!).
Inside the trunk with the spare tire removed. That's the wiring harness that comes out right at the mounting point of the rollbar's passenger rear pad. That aside, once I trimmed the edges of the metal above that area it dropped right in. Alignment in the seat belt towers was dead-on! Perfect. No drilling is required in the seat-belt tower. All the hols match up with factory holes in the body.
Bar installed. Trimming the package deck was pretty easy but it did take me 4 times to trim it to final clearances. It's not yet bolted in because I plan to add a backing plate under the front-center of the cover to give me a more solid mounting point for my in-car camera mount.
Clearance with the top is close but there is no binding or issues with putting up the soft top. Seems to be a pretty close fit.Next step is to trim the plastic body panels and get those installed and finally to trim the carpet on the rear deck. Some time down the road I'll likely take the carpet out and have it professionaly edged for a more 'factory' look. Of course I might butcher up the plastic to the point the edging on the carpet would be putting lipstick on a pig. I'll see how it goes.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home