4 replies to this topic

[Daviewonder]

Hello All The roof on my 1978 Mini Saloon has seen better days. It has several rust holes and the Gutter is corroded away in a lot of places.

There is a Guy local to me who has offered me a roof that has been chopped off with about 6 inches of post left on. This seems like an ideal fix to me.

Any idea what the best way of replacing a roof is? I have done numerous searches and all I have come up with is threads asking the same question as mine but no real answers. The only answers are "do a search" etc, which I have done.

Cheers, Dave

[sonikk4]

You can carefully drill out all of the spot welds on the new roof section to separate it from the unwanted section. Do exactly the same to your roof and remove it.
Then offer up the new roof to make sure it fits well. If so clean up the mating surfaces and spray with Zinc rich weldable primer then either plug weld or spot weld the roof on.

You can cut out the sections of guttering you need to splice into your car. Or when you cut off the unwanted metal from the replacement roof then leave on the sections of guttering that you need . It may not be straight forward but with patience very doable.

[cradley-heathen]

i havnt replaced a roof myself, but i did have to make a huge section of one to add into the stretch mini limo i built. however a friend of mine has replaced a full roof, including a short section of the posts, and the technique was the same for both really.

get some lengths of box, or angle, or whatever you have readily available, and brace the posts up in as many places as possible. then cut the roof off at the top of the posts.

with some carefull cutting and measuring splice the new posts together with the old ones. ideally you need to do this in such a way that the cut/weld is staggered. i.e dont just cut through in one linear shot, the b-posts in particular have a definate inner and outer pressing which can be staggered by an inch or so. doing this greatly increases the strength of the joins.

having said that though, if your welding is any good, you should be confident enough to trust that your welding is strong enough with one linear cut on each post. if your welding isnt so hot, defiantely stagger the joins, and if you welding is pretty poor, get someone else to do it!

[Ethel]

I think I'd prefer to "cut n shut" the pillars, but unpick some of the seams to create plenty of overlap.

[tom1]

Hi, I have ex hill climb / sprint mini which in its early life has had a roof chop. The thing is that from the bottom of the gutter to the top of the rear quarter window is approx 20 mm, on the other 3 minis I have access to this gap only about 4 mm, one is a fixed window the other 2 have the openers, with the same gap. If you are offered a new roof make shore this is the same on both roofs. Also what roof type have I got ?