Well, after having bought and sold a couple of AE's before I though it was now time to build one that I would keep...

I started of with a good example, purchased 1500km and a ferry ride away, a good chance to see what it was like before pulling it apart..





It is a 1985, facelift and was supercharged before it was imported into NZ



As I am intending on building it into a street driven club car (for hillclimbs, trackdays etc) the sunroof had to go to to give me enough head room with the rollcage and a helmet on, so with a lot of help from a friend we started building a mould of the factory roof.



Welding (poorly) the sunroof skin to the roof



Bog anyone...





Then some fancy primer that I spent hours and hours polishing...



The mould starting to take shape

Once the mould was complete, we added some boards to the bottom to make it easier to work with once it as off the car...the completed mould now just needs to be trimmed and then polished to ensure a good finish. The film you can see is PVA release agent, this washes off with water.



The spotwelds on the roof were then drilled out using a small holesaw like tool that I bought for the job







Stripping down the rest of the car and removing the engine - fairly sure I'll be ditching the supercharger in favour of a turbo setup, however the supercharger did perform really well even in 5th gear, they just don't seem to like the revs.

Wow! nice project! That roof look nicely done!

cool! the mould looks nice
we did the same yesterday except we had a non-sunroof car to start with.

Thats a fine looking gel coat, and nice work on the frp

Quote:Thats a fine looking gel coat, and nice work on the frp Thumbsup

Quote:cool! the mould looks nice
we did the same yesterday except we had a non-sunroof car to start with.
Thumbsup

Quote:Wow! nice project! That roof look nicely done!

Thanks guys, Lajoosh, you will know how much sanding is involved!!

Super86 Wrote:

Quote:Thats a fine looking gel coat, and nice work on the frp Thumbsup

Quote:cool! the mould looks nice
we did the same yesterday except we had a non-sunroof car to start with.
Thumbsup

Quote:Wow! nice project! That roof look nicely done!

Thanks guys, Lajoosh, you will know how much sanding is involved!!

we didnt have the opportunity to make the original surface as shiney as you did, so we have to polish the mould itself

Wow, that roof was so nicely filled! I'd love to see what it turns out like when its done .

To bad they messed it up. Nothing wrong with an OEM sunroof

nice work though

Cant wait to see what you do with this car, looked at it many times on trademe. Good luck with your build.