carandclassic

JEEZZ!!
I hope its been strengthened in all the proper places! :?: :?:
Does look nice but pretty sure I wouldnt want to drive it! :|
 
Got series 2 style painted sills but clearly a series 1 car. Other converables i've seen have had the rear doors welded up. I'm guessing there is room behind the sills to add some streangth?
 
At least in theory no need to add strength! Don't forget the base unit was designed pillarless and frameless. So the B/C posts have merely been returned to the state the factory intended. And without full height B/C posts I can assure you as an engineer that the remaining roof won't have added much to stiffness!

All the owner has done is cut the roof off, which is exactly how the factory did it for the styling prototype and for the running prototype produced.

Mind you, I'm with Richard in erring on the side of safety and beefing up the sills as he's done on his!

Chris
 
That car was at Beaulieu a few months ago for the spring autojumble. It was up for £5000 at the time, and was a real hacksaw job. The doors had been cut off, the piece of roof that remained at the front looked like it had been done with a grinder. A right mess.

Looks like it may have been cleaned up a little since then, but still a hacksaw/grinder job.

I doubt that DVLA are aware of it either. I'd be very careful going anywhere near it.
 
I'm not convinced about a 4 door convertible like this, although as Chris says the roof doesn't really add much to the overall strength, that's why if you look at the crash-test photo's the windscreen pillars and roof fold up first.

One of the benefits of welding up the rear door area is that it helps to strengthen the B/C post, from experience I know they flex quite a bit when not attached to the roof, so I bet they really flex on this when you open the rear doors. At one time I considered doing a 4 door convertible, but I was going to convert the rear doors to suicide format, hence moving those loads to the D post. Still, the side-impact protection aspect of the B/C is severely limited.

I assume there is no hood, can't see how anybody would buy it with no hood, and certainly not at that price, even with the original roof in place it probably isn't worth that, and removing the roof without any additional work certainly doesn't add to the value.
 
Wouldn't be too difficult to put a roof back on, you'd also need rear windscreen and door glass frames, probably worth doing if the car was cheap enough and you had a rotten donor to take the roof from, but only if the "convertible" is solid and cheap.
 
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