Thread: V8 county ute

Definitely do the external ribs !!
Just liking the look is reason enough, but it will have the bonus of breaking up the roof visually, so you don't need to worry about dents/ripples or rivets in the join as there's no point in trying for a smooth finish.

Steve

Ribs ahoy then,
It's amazing how much strength they add, I used to trim the hedges by standing on the roof

Some parts from British car components

The other advantage of the ribs is that they minimise damage from low clearance in carparks (vox experentia!).

John

I have an old broken UHF antenna that i cut20 mm higher than the rhino bars, if it wobbles on entry watch out.

Lots of time today, not much to show.
Fine tuning brackets and clearances, once I torqued things up I got a bit of misalignment ,so tweaked that which is time consuming.
I removed lots of rivets reset the clearances, deburred and replaced with some 4.8 mm closed aluminium rivets. Also bought a new toy a big two lever riveter that can handle 6 mm rivets that I will use on areas where I drilled out the spot welds .
I used a roof stiffener from the county roof as stiffener for the cab back, ground off the spot welds and bogged up the outside a bit before I riveted it on.
Now it's chips burgers and beers

Now that I'm pretty sure everything will work, sort of proof of concept. I'm starting at the beginning and tweak, fettle,fine tune and then progress to the next step. Then pull it all apart seal gaps and paint.

Another day on the roof.
I tried and tried to put a small radius bend in the roof stiffeners but alas I was going backwards so I stopped. I rang a few sheet metal contractors but no joy, then dropped into a panel shop he was willing to have a go , so hopefully I will have them back during the week.
So final assembly of the roof drill out rivets clean back to metal Sikaflex, closed 4.8mm rivets and 6mm open ones as open is all I could get in that size. Weld up the frame, Sikaflex the internal ribs on.[IMG]https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20170225/8e21ed92fe71c6a99bd83