culturedredneck
GOLD Star
Well, it pains me to type this, but I had a bit of an accident on Saturday and it looks like my roof is going to need some surgery. It was the maiden trail voyage of my 97 FZJ80 after I had spent a few years pouring lots of blood and sweat into her (with LOTS of help from this forum) and now it looks like a lot more blood sweat and money will be needed all over again. It's certainly a huge blow to morale as I finally had her in a place I felt good about and had just had her painted less than a year ago. With all the money I've put into baselining and upgrading her, I am trying to avoid swapping bodies, and at this point am not considering chopping the top. I'm mainly looking for thoughts and advice at swapping the roof. I know I can locate a spare roof and I am searching for a body shop that is willing to do it at a reasonable cost. I'm curious if anyone has done this before and what advice do you have. Can it be done well enough to not cause problems down the line? Is it structurally sound? Any advice/ thoughts welcome. I'm pretty committed to restoring the damage back to factory if it isn't insanely expensive.
A bit of backstory if anyone is interested:
We were on a particularly tough section of trail (trail 16 at Windrock in TN) and what looked like the right line turned bad when a large rock slipped out from under my front driver tire and dropped it into a big hole. Honestly we really shouldn't have been on that trail that day, and I still had my sway bars connected since I thought we were keeping the wheeling pretty tame. It just goes to show the importance of being over prepared.
Thankfully It was a very slow roll so I believe I was spared from any real structural damage or body tweaking. Unfortunately though, the open sun roof got caught on a root ball that was sticking out from the embankment, essentially pinning the car to the ground. It took 3 winches, a few hours and some weird angles to free her without causing more damage.
As always, thanks in advance.
A bit of backstory if anyone is interested:
We were on a particularly tough section of trail (trail 16 at Windrock in TN) and what looked like the right line turned bad when a large rock slipped out from under my front driver tire and dropped it into a big hole. Honestly we really shouldn't have been on that trail that day, and I still had my sway bars connected since I thought we were keeping the wheeling pretty tame. It just goes to show the importance of being over prepared.
Thankfully It was a very slow roll so I believe I was spared from any real structural damage or body tweaking. Unfortunately though, the open sun roof got caught on a root ball that was sticking out from the embankment, essentially pinning the car to the ground. It took 3 winches, a few hours and some weird angles to free her without causing more damage.
As always, thanks in advance.