The CF Bedford Rebuild Begins
Part 10: The roof
The roofs edge (once gutters removed) was quite rusty, because the roof is one big panel, sandblasting it was not an option, so only the edges were done, the rest done by hand.
The roof itself is not very strong, the Bedford has two inner braces which don't do much to stop that hollow sound, and so a third was added to try give it more structure.
On the left is a standard CF Bedford roof, notice the three straight channels. Now on the right is what I did to it so the sunroof had a flat bit of roof. Notice the roof is all rounded, no rear spoiler or dropped roof as yet. I can't trick you, you know it's coming.
Because there are no windows in the back a sunroof or something was needed (will have rear fan unit as well - maybe), the roof also has three flutes, channels or whatever you want to call them, running the length of the roof. Average Joe would just cut a hole and full up the gaps with silicone. I'm not average Joe ;), because of the roof chop, and keeping the original pillar angles I have to extend the length of the roof (60mm) anyway, so decided to use a pop up sunroof in the rear, but changing the design of the flutes/channels so as to redirect any water to the rear of the van instead of blocking it against the sunroof.
I have no idea if the actual design will work or not, as long as it doesn't whistle when I drive down the road lol. The rear channels are about rear door width so will hopefully disperse a bit of water away from the door itself.
As the roof was like the rest of the van - rusty, I had to make a bottom edge in some sections while patching others. The bottom edge was handy as it also gives it strength as well as being a mounting point to weld to.
I was going to add another sunroof in the front, was even thinking about an electric sunroof but have decided against it. The van will have air conditioning and the windows go up and down so hopefully wont need the front sunroof - can always add it later.
Roof spoiler
I wanted a rear spoiler but didn't want a big one. I like the old flying wing style (up and across) but without the gutters it doesn't quite look right. The bobtail (flicks up) is one I have never liked on cars or vans. So I went for a rear spoiler that is semi embedded into the rear of the roof, biggest problem is the internal rear hinges so will have to think about it. Oh and finally got a reversing camera so need to mount that somewhere too (is 25mm lens). The plan is to sink the rear spoiler into the roof section and have three supports, the outer ones being where the rear gull wing door is and the middle to set the reversing camera into, with brake light above it.
The main reason for the roof spoiler is for the reversing camera. Yeah I know I could of fitted it by the number plate or somewhere but wheres the fun in that.
I started making square pockets for the spoiler to sit into, then thought it's just a water trap so went with a 45 degree idea, which you see in this photo. Is a bad photo, sorry, but if you look at the end of the plate you can see how much I have lifted the roof.
The idea was there but I was having trouble getting the reserving camera to fit into this concept and for some reason I wanted the back of the spoiler to be in line with the back of the van. What was I thinking? It's a spoiler it's meant to stick out!
The Bedford roof is higher in the middle than it is at the ends, so what I ended up doing was lifting the rear of the roof to the same height as the middle. Not the entire rear half of the roof, just the sides. I did it this way so could flow the roof spoiler into the roof line and it be nearly invisible from the side but 'there' at the back.
What I ended up doing was sinking the rear roof into the van. I cut along the top rear side, between the outer channel and the edge of the roof. Because of the rear hinge I was limited to how far I could go but the thought of a roof spoiler has popping up in my mind. Long story short I made a removable roof spoiler to hold the hi stop light and the middle support to house the reversing camera, This camera will actually be my rear vision mirror. Back to the long version ..
There is a reason why I made the rear of the roof step down more than the rest of the roof, but I'm danged if I can remember the reason now. If I ever remember hopefully I'll add it here.
As I pushed the roof spoiler back the ends became harder to blend in. I have a 3-way bend, in a small area to work to, or do I.
To date I have made/cut out/trimmed/modified several versions of the corners. They look good done with cardboard but tacked in with steel don't look the same. My mind just isn't connecting lately. If I think about it too much (which I've been doing) I tend to stuff it up, I need to just do it without thinking. I know sounds weird but it's like when you paint a house, well prepping a house (sanding), is a long boring horrible job because you're thinking about it, turn off the thoughts and you just do it and the job gets done quickly and well - usually.
I started with a single mount in the middle, as the spoiler was too long not to have any center support. This was just one of those ideas that didn't have a lot of thought to go into it, well it did but was more concerned about the sides and trying to get the reversing cam do-able. I ended up with (below right) it totally different but this wasn't to be the end of it. This "thing" on the end is the reversing camera housing, but I still needed to adapt the high stoplight either into that mount or mount it in the actual roof spoiler.
The spoiler has to be removable so it can be painted under and cleaned or whatever.
The next mission was mounting the high stoplight (LED), because the camera is quite long and the light has some depth and I didn't want the roof spoiler to become a landing strip for light aircraft or birds I tried to keep it within the body dimensions - which I managed to.
I made up a square(ish) box to hold the light then measured, cut and trim the reserving cam mount until I had a couple of millimetres between the cam and light.
The cam is about 5 millimetres above the spoiler height but there is no way of avoiding that, so will make it into a feature. *add rolling eyes icon here*
I originally had the high stop light mounted on the reversing cam mount and started making the spoiler to suit but with the center mount it was going to be to gappy (gappy - it's a word now :p). I cut the light housing off and mounted it in the spoiler, problem being the high stop light needed an extra 5mm than what the spoiler would give, so that feature I mentioned above became a reality.
I think my biggest problem doing this was I was thinking high tech when simple is often the better method.
As you can see the center of the roof is dropped down, well actually the sides have been lifted up. To the left is a shot from the back. In some ways I wish I had a window in the back so wouldn't need the spoiler, the (bad) photo doesn't do it justice as it does blend in quite well, but looking at the back it is looking a bit bottom heavy so am thinking of lifting the tail lights above the body line, or at least on the body line (which I did end up doing).
