KugaWestie's Blog

Looking good.

 

Get the roof bars in.

 

I got mine last year, and they sent the roof bars a week or so later.

 

I decided to test it without. FAIL

 

Flapped about like a flappy flappy thing. Was quite scary driving it. 70mph was brave.

 

Its better with roof bars.

 

Bob

Cheers Bob.

 

I am going to have a crack at making some as £70 for the ones from SBFS seems a lot of money to me. But I am wondering, are they straight of do they have a slight upward bow in them?

This was my attempt of a half hood using the WF one, cost about £30 to get it modified.  It doesn't move at all up to about 80mph.  Doesn't come with a bag    

 

 

I've heard (source?) that you can buy some fibreglass rods from Ikea's curtain department that do the job nicely.  I have a half hood on order from SBF7's too.  Mine will have a big curved zip so I can get in and out vertically.

 

Rory's Dad

Your half hood is almost identical to mine which was made by Steve Mahon who was doing them a while ago from this site but seems to be doing other things now. During the development we came to the conclusion that having two tubes running from the front to the back was necessary which is the same conclusion that you have made. He used two length of aluminium tube probably 12mm at a guess, available from B&Q I think he said and as they are just about the max length they supply at around the 1 metre length. They slide into two fitted tunnels sewn under the roof one front and one rear the two tube ends have been flattened and wrapped in tape to stop scratching and sit ontop of the screen and the roll bar they can't slide out and improve the whole roof drastically. My only issue with mine is that the side poppers sometimes undo which is a pain and could be a big issue at speed, I need to possibly modify that but its only happened once ( Friday and may have been my fault) I have used a small screw and flat plate in the inside of the screen to hold the middle down and give a little more security. I guess the front is fixed to the Westfield screen moulding job. On Friday it was -2 outside but with my roof and doors on was reasonably warm inside. One last thing, I find that rolling it up makes it crease a bit but in the big scheme of things is small beer. Hany in the little roll bag as you have.

 

Good luck

 

Bob  

I made up some roof bars today.

 

A trip to Homebase got me this lot for £15

 

The first thing I did was to cut the hanging loop so that it would fit over the windscreen

 

Then I removed the plastic insert from the mophead end and drilled a hole through it

 

Next was to cut a section out of the plastic pipe clip

 

I bolted the pipe clip to the tube insert

 

After cutting down the mop handle tube to the correct length, I got the trusty gaffa tape out to reinforce the end of the tube and help it stop splitting

 

Then I inserted the tube insert to the end of the shortened tube, and job done!

 

A budget £15 set instead of £70 from SBFS

They are actually curved upwards and away from the passengers/internal of the car, so as to "Stretch" the hood as best as possible.

 

Flat ones won't make any difference i would have thought.

 

SBFS ones also use a strong sticky back velcro on the main roll bar, with a slot thingy, and its a simple L shaped bracket at the windscreen end.

 

From memory, you want the bars to be about 6" inwards from the roll bar.

 

If I get time, I will photo mine, and PM them to you.

 

Bob

Bob, photos would be good if you can please.

 

I will see how I get on with my home brew efforts and if they are not effective then I will be talking to SBFS, so any upfront information from you would be great.

 

Thanks

I made a couple of poles very similar to yours but used telescopic floor sweeper handles from Tesco - these now fit right in the boot.

 

The ends looked like this one before I cut and heated them up to bend them to fit the shape of the windscreen channel..

 

..like so.

 

At the other end, I cut off the plastic and flattened the bar before shaping it over my roll bar and finishing them with heatshrink.

Thanks Bombero

 

I can pull the modified pipe clip arrangement out of the tube on my ones and then it all goes into the SBFS storage bag.

 

Do your bars work well and stop the flap that Bob is talking about above? I have not had chance to have a drive in mine yet

I went out for a blat this morning with the hood on.

 

Very pleased with it and my home made bars, it all works very well.

 

I got up to around 90mph on a nice private road, and there was not much flapping going on, so all good I think.

 

It also makes a lot of difference to the amount of draughts that hit you, which is great.