2.0 KCC 356 Speedster - www.356speedster.co.za

[Tony Z]

good work!
i hate fibreglass

[Bossie2004]

Jobs well done Gary, but Thanx for the suspense on ROOF#2 - we are eagerly awaiting the photos, and final product...

Tony, "hate" is such a strong word, but bloody hell, isn't there one that is exponentially worse - NOTHING can be as bad as getting the fibreglass done, you can't touch nothing without getting stuck to it, and you can't scratch 'cause then you stuck to yourself....I've built a Cubbyhole from scratch as I was not going to chop-up the '63 Beetle's original to make a radio fit in there, and that was such a khak job, although the final product looks & works well, the laaitie learnt a couple of words that he couldn't find in the dictionary!!!

[Bossie2004]

One month & counting.....No updates, whats happening Gary, it hasn't been that cold in the evenings yet, but the chill is setting in..."throw us a bone, we need some information mahn..." is them scissors sorted out?

[flatfourfan]

Hey dude, I'm waiting on one thing, but I'm happy to say that it's at the welder who's going to Co2 the last of it this weekend for me, gonna get blasted after that and then powder-coated.

I'm starting work on the second variation of # 2 this weekend as I'm doing a variation on the first one with tweaks that I made on the second one that will be a bit of a update of sorts.

[acpaterson]

Hey bud,
just finished going through all 50 pages.. What a journey from the early days in 2007.. Pity so many pics are missing.. from page 35 on there's a lot of stuff gone.
I'll hopefully be in the same situation as when you got yours home from the painter back then. Also going to Dynamat interior etc. Am sourcing as much as I can now for the rebuild, including badges and scripts etc.
I'm sure you're long time through your original 40 K rebuild budget..

regards

alan

[flatfourfan]

Hey bud,
just finished going through all 50 pages.. What a journey from the early days in 2007.. Pity so many pics are missing.. from page 35 on there's a lot of stuff gone.
I'll hopefully be in the same situation as when you got yours home from the painter back then. Also going to Dynamat interior etc. Am sourcing as much as I can now for the rebuild, including badges and scripts etc.
I'm sure you're long time through your original 40 K rebuild budget..

regards

alan

Hey Alan

Luckily I still have all my old pics and way more that I took over the years. I'm working on my own page where I'll eventually do it all over from start to finish, so my days of posting everything up here will come to an end at some stage.

Including buying the car and the whole motor swap..........I'm still under budget. I'm currently sitting on about R67 000 all in. I had a total budget of 40k for the car and 40k for the build up.

[flatfourfan]

Update:

I get the roof back on Tuesday from the welder and then it's take it off to the blaster and powdercoater. The part that I'm missing is still missing, so for the meantime, I'm making a plan with something else that I have.

In the meantime, I've been building version 2.1

Version 1. This was done with 2mm steel and was based on my Canadian friends work. ( I quickly realised that the cars differ a lot and as many mods as I tried to make, it just wasn't going to work for me). I kept everything as the lengths were right, it was the gauge steel that was wrong, So version 2 started based on my own ideas.

Version 2. Changed a lot, gauge steel, smoother bends and the plan is to fit a bar for the front windscreen so that I can get away from the crap that we have to use on our speedster. My pipe has been on back order now for almost a month, so I decided to just make it work with the current front bow so that I can get it done. This frame has been Co2 welded and ground back and I should hopefully get this back tonight or tomorrow morning.

Version 2.1. I was asked last week to make a 1 off roof for a local guy and who wasn't prepared to wait for the completed units as costs on laser cutting and bending really do add a lot to the final price tag, I guess I'm going to have to look into seeing what the guys would pay for a frame. The chap threw a bunch of money my way, so 2.1 started. I modded this one even more to tweak and tune it to get the final design just right. Mods included a turnbuckle in the B and C loop. re-profiled B loop to get it all in tighter.

With the turnbuckle on, it can allow you to get the bow night and tight and avoid the look of wearing a spider-man suit and ending up looking like you're just wearing his pajama's, instead of the real deal. This roof has to be tight.................







With the B loop being a new design that will bring it in tighter, it allows me to get less of an angle on the scissor section that now allows it to open easier/ smoother and more important, much straighter. This also allows me to get the front windscreen bow under the rear section and tucked in.



The above is the new design, the bottom is the old one, straight away you can see the bow is now straighter. I'll tweak this this afternoon and get the top in even closer and it'll look way neater. This has also allowed me to not have all of the corners and pivot points all lined up to extend the front bar. I want this stuff well away from your melon when driving.



I need to add a tab on the middle one so that I can get the C loop attached and folded back and then i can pull in the top rod even closer. I need to also extend the front bar to the windscreen bow and a mount for that, but that's a quick job.

I should finish off this one tomorrow and then it's blasting and paint and then break it down and ship it to the guy. I'm also working on some tabs that will mount to the rear seating area where the roof can rest on, so it doesn't seem like an after-thought.

Stay tuned.

[Bossie2004]

Lufly mate, looking great. Post some picks of the final product before shipping it of...please?

[acpaterson]

Gary, where did you purchase that Sound Deadening mat?

[flatfourfan]

Will do bossie.

I was hoping to have the front bar yesterday, but it seems that the guy wants to use the KKC front bow instead. So I've had to mod the front bars at the last moment for him by making new ones actually from my mock up that i used on my front bow. So much drama.

He's set to collect on Saterday, so it's a bit of a mad dash to finish off 2 new bars and have them primed and painted as well before he pitches. I also have to fit it to his car, so this should be interesting to see how much the local cars from KKC differ from one another.

I've already taken on another order for another roof yesterday, so work will start on that one next week.

Alan. That's RAMMAT that the audiophiles use for car installs. I bought a crap load a while back to use on the car. Will install the rest once I've finished my mods to the front of the car.

[flatfourfan]

Another good Saterday and Monday.

I'm waiting for the guy to come back with his roof, so that I can replace his rear bow with another that I made that fits a lot better, it's a 5 minute fix, so hopefully I see him this weekend and post the final pics of that one. I'm now on frame #3 and it's tweaking all the time to get it fitting and looking better.

Now that I understand the geometry a whole lot better I'm making the parts quicker and much much easier. A quick few pics to show what goes into making the rods and bars. All of the hardware is made from 4mm mild steel and is NOT easy to bend on the vice. Pretty much all the parts have to be pie cut and then bent in on itself and then welded back up and ground down to keep the strength of the part.







All ground down with a flap disc and ready for final finishing.



Each side assembled.





Measuring up the 4 tabs that fit to the main hoop for the mounting points. All 4mm mild steel.







Ignore the length, they still have to be cut down before they get welded onto the bow.

All fitted and on the car.





Tack weld those this weekend and Willem and then finish off the two rear hoop mounting tabs and bars on Friday which should be a quick one. I should have this frame ready for paint by the end of the weekend. It'll at least be in primer by then I hope.

The tension on this set up is actually pretty high and I can feel the torque in the joints when I open and close it, it's been made to carry the weight of the front bow as well as the top material, so it should be sorted once I get it weighted up. If anyone is wondering about roof #1, she's sitting in parts on my work bench, this was the one that was made from the 3mm steel that I didn't think was cutting the mustard. So it'll probably be scrapped as I can't use any of the parts with the exception of the rear bow rods.

I've decided that I'll have Roger CAD the whole lot up and then we can decide on what we're looking at to have it all cut and bent and then I'll just do the hoops by hand and have them welded up by a friend. It's a moer load of work to bend all this stuff by hand and my original quote (of which I have 2 more orders is dirt cheap........lol).

Car is off to Dirk this week to have him sort out some wiring gremlins that I have with my tach and oil gauge, but that should be done one day this week as well as new brakes for the front.

Then hopefully.........my dash pad and gauge surround that has been sitting on the bench for about 3 years.

[Firebird]

Looking good dude

[flatfourfan]

Well, I had a good and bad week last week. Good because it ended up with frame #3 being pretty much done. Bad because the guy that I sold frame #2 to, decided to strip it down and attempt to copy it and offer it for sale to another speedy owner that I know shortly after I fitted it to his car.

So gotta love doing 3 odd months of R&D and time and time and time to have a schmuck come along and copy my work in an afternoon and then go ahead and advertise an (improved) roof for sale as his own work.

Anyway, an agreement was reached and he won’t be doing it anymore.

Back to the good stuff.

Welded all the tabs on the middle frame and then got it all mocked up. I had to cut down the bow a bit as I was a smidgen higher on one side as I was on the other. Easy fix with a Co2 welder. Ground down the whole lot and then headed home to try and deal with fiasco from roof #2.



Then reattached the material to the front bow to check it’s all right and I’m happy to say that it is.

Various stages of folding down.









This pic was taken with the middle clip unattached as I wanted to see how much of the windscreen you would see.



This pic is the roof full extended, but not clipped up, all of the tension is now taken up on the frame. Ignore all the holes................





All folded up.



I knew that I’d have to trim the edges of the front frame, hence me not wanting to use it in the long term.

There are two old tears in the roof that I’m going to get fixed in the meantime as I want to make some changes to the roof to pull it tighter in some places as there are 2 small creases that are irritating me. Once I’m happy with the material, then I’ll send it to my guy to make me a beige one. Yup, I said beige one.

The changes that I made.



I moved the B bow further back so that when the roof is up, the bar can’t be seen from the outside.

So this will have to be moved and reattached.



The weekend will be cleaning it up and filling some imperfections, and then attaching the tabs for the c post.

I also decided that I'll not be mass producing these things. It seems that people aren't happy with the cost involved with the frame and what goes into it, they just see R500 steel and hardware and wonder why the price has to be so much more. So alas...........#3 should be the last one I'll make by hand.

[flatfourfan]

Front section of the roof cleaned back and now painted in ivory.

Looks good against the steel hardware.



Rear bow and tabs will be cleaned up this weekend and then work can start on version 3.something...........*i've lost count*. This will be a special commission from Manny and will be the nicest one yet as I have the geometry sorted perfectly and now I can look at slimming it all down. to make it all close up tighter and neater. I'll make another prototype that I'll be able to work off, but all the hard work is already done.

[eben]

Great job. Too bad about the copy-cats... I thought that only happened with the moral-less folk in china....