westfield with hardtop

[Gary Taylor]

hi , never seen this before but on sevenspot on fb there is an add (nothing to do with me) for an untouched westy kit with a hardtop allegedly 1 of only 3 . any way it looks really smart , just I had never seen it before........

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1259449857408278&set=pcb.1068530649898097&type=3&theater

[Captain Colonial]

Real hen's teeth job, that.

[noggin]

Looks smart until you want to get in or out!!

[Dave Eastwood (Gadgetman) - Club Chairman]

Looks smart until you want to get in or out!!

With full gull wing doors, it's easier than any other roof option!

[Stuart]

Have a look here

[Dave Eastwood (Gadgetman) - Club Chairman]

It's a topic that comes up every so often, usually when of the few that made it into the wild goes up for sale!

 

In principal, it's not a bad idea; all the usual "cons" that people throw out against it would be solvable. But, doing it, even as it stood for a price that sufficient people would pay to make it worthwhile is hard. Lets face it, the market is quite a small sub set of WF owners, at best.

 

But worse still, you have the way the normal bodywork is made and installed; it just makes it so, so difficult when the fit of the tub is down to the builder - have they managed to pull it slightly wider around the cockpit?, maybe pull one side further forward and so forth. It's OK with a vinyl roof, you just adjust the overlap.

 

But with a hard top, the only way with that design to guarantee fit is to fix the tub with the rear hardtop section temporarily in place, so that they aligned properly, and then align the windscreen to the hard top, so that again, they were square to each other and fitted properly.

 

I suppose it's where Caterham scores, as their body is formed around the chassis in places, and the aluminium body panels are fitted in chassis production, they're dimensionally so much more consistent.

[dombanks]

Well said dave. A decent folding roof and door solution would be better.

[Dave Eastwood (Gadgetman) - Club Chairman]

I think Donkervoort have taken a good approach to this.

(Obviously, I understand that the final styling of some of their cars is an acquired taste! But I'm talking about the basic ideas underneath the styling).

I like the way a few years back, they went from aping the basic Lotus 7 look, quite closely, to certain key redesigned structures; one of which is the scuttle, wind screen, screen frame arrangement.

What they did, through a process subtle widening and changing angles, was to effectively build space into which permanently attached half doors could fit. The doors still sort of fit on top of and outside the tub, much like ours do, but they integrate properly with the scuttle.

What's the significance? Rigid doors, dimensionally stable, so no twisting with wind load, proper weather sealing at the leading edge and proper hinge mechanisms, though the hinging is still around the screen, like most Seven's, permanently fitted half doors, mean somewhere permanent to mount wing mirrors, so doors can open fully.

The clever bit then, is making removable glazed upper sections that look like they're a permanent part of the door, rather than an add on. When in place, they give the protection of full doors, and are stiff enough to again, be dimensionally stable.

The big pay off of this, is the roof's, both hard and soft tops look much more styled and designed as part of the overall package rather than annoying customer request fulfilment. And because you have a clean stable door arrangement, and the luxury of the bodywork always being where you expect it to be, (as opposed to being fitted in someone's garage to give the best fit that could be managed at the time), the tops are all easily interchangeable.

[Dave Eastwood (Gadgetman) - Club Chairman]

And finally, a mini rant on behalf of those of that do use the cars year round, that do use weather gear.

We laugh, mock and occasionally despair at the standard weather gear for one reason. We accept it!

Because we accept it, the factory don't tend to see much of a market for anything else, or for putting more work into it.

If you take the Sport Turbo, it's weather gear was completely re-done, and it's not just the more FW like body shape, it's actual hood is unique even to the FW, and a much more thought through design, from a sealing point of view. As are the (still very standard looking deform the outside) side screens. But the Sport Turbo market required this, so it was done.

[Lyonspride]

There area many reasons beyond keeping the driver dry, for not using a Westfield as everyday transport in UK wet weather. I think this is probably why the whole hard top thing never really takes off.

 

For a start there is no way to limit the damage from road salt, it gets everywhere and it sticks to everything as it contains molasses. I won't even start driving the Westfield until there has been at least one heavy rain after winter.