Retrospective 1978 Camaro Targa Top Project

[theastronaut]

A few years ago we had a guy come by our shop wanting a lift-off roof section for his '78 Camaro. Years ago he had cut a section out and had a canvas cover for it but decided that he wanted a metal insert. He had another shop put a roof skin on it but they did a horrible job and we had to redo that. It already had subframe connectors and a main hoop with front and rear down bars to stiffen the body. Our job was to make a one peice removable roof section, much like T-tops, out of steel. Once I got into the job I found that it had been hit and the quarter panel replaced and we had to rework some of the B pillar areas.

Here's a picture of a factory Porsche Targa top to give you an idea of what we were doing.







And here's what we started with. A very poorly done roof clip installation. Not only was it welded incorrectly, the alignment was way off and the glass would have never fit in the pinchweld. They didn't even get all of the lead out of the seam before they started welding!!






To fix that mess, I completly cut away the whole factory leaded/offset seam and made an new panel. I also replicated the factory inner brace, seen where the plug welds are.









The front windshield opening was misaligned so we cut it to repostion it. The rear cut was where the owner originaly wanted the opening to begin. We later talked him into letting the opening start farther forward, much like a convertible windshield frame.







The windshield frame blasted, primed, and repositioned.





The rear opening trimmed.




Trimming the front edge to the final opening size. The owner wanted the thicker windshield frame to start with but we realized that the corners would make getting in and out of the car alot harder without hitting his head. It also looks much better with the thinner windshield frame; like a factory convertable may have looked.









I'll work on posting some more pics later on. When we first got the car in the shop we really thought this would be a hack job and a something that would really kill the look and value of the car. We were wrong and it turned out to be a really neat project that looked like the factory could have made it. And with the top on, most people would never even notice that it had a lift off top.