Photos Unboxed: Cut The Roof Off - Juiceboxforyou

Throughout this whole build, Barry has been a critical ingredient in keeping me calm and pushing forward. He also likes to fuck with me as much as possible, especially when I’m completely vulnerable like a helpless child watching him cut the car into pieces.

The peak moment was when he replaced the roof on the car. I was relatively new to all this metalwork, so watching him hack my car to bits was tough to stomach. When it came to cutting the roof off it was a whole other experience.

Looking back on these photos, I didn’t start snapping pics until I realised I might never get the chance to see this again. Barry kept laughing and exaggerating the scenario to fuck with my head, and it worked a treat. The car looked like an absolute pile without a roof. When we pulled it out of the garden, I didn’t expect us to go this far, but I wanted it to do this the right way. No matter how much Barry was fucking with me, I fully trusted his judgement.

When he found the rust behind the roof, he felt the best option was to replace it to see if there were any other rust hiding underneath, cutting more out of it and then welding would have fucked with the shape. Seeing the car reduced to a skeleton was hard to stomach. I had only ever seen small metalwork repairs when friends had chopped bits out, but roof replacements were new territory.

The car looks like a scrap heap in these images, like its never going to be a car again. If you are used to seeing this stuff, you might be telling me to relax, but I won’t lie, for a few hours that day I thought it was game over for the shell and keep thinking I was way in over my head.

This shot mainly, with the missing B-Piller. Thankfully the rest was only on the rear windows on both sides.

I couldn’t help but climb up on the roof of our toilets and take as many pics as I could, watching as Barry laughed below. These are some of the most vivid memories from this build so far, and to be honest, I can’t wait to look back on these photos in a few years when the car is hopefully finished and appreciate all this hard work.

While all this was going on, Barry chopped out the rusty front inner panel too; Josh was going to make a fresh one.

Luckily the rust was only a layer deep; this layer could easily be cut out and replaced, it looked much worse when we first opened this area.

We’ve kept the roof, and its many shades of misery as a souvenir Ill eventually hang it up somewhere.

Barry didn’t take long to hack out the crust once we got the roof off, he really only had to grind back the surface rust and get it ready for welding once we removed the first two layers.

In the meantime, Bryan stipped the bottom end of the engine and put it aside, ready for reassembly at a future date. Thankfully the bearings were in good shape, and the Crank showed no signs of wear. At least there were a few positives from the day so far.

As I’ve mentioned time and time again, I would be completely lost without Bryan donating pieces to the cause. He let us use these B pillar cuts which were vital to the roof repair, along with the drip rails as mine was utterly fucked.

The roof was a little rough around the edges, but thankfully there were no dents or bends. Barry straightened it out and got it ready to tack on.

Both sides had similar rust; this is a common enough place for 86s to go as moisture appears to hang out in these areas, eventually revealing itself.

I’m very thankful that we tackled this

This is a classic barry shot, a Wispa and the safety squints

With the B pillar tacked on, he started to build the new pieces to fill in the blanks.

As Barry was doing the roof, I tried to do something productive, so we rebuilt the rear callipers.

But not before we overcooked the brake pistons. Any excuse to set stuff on fire.

As rust started to vanish, and raw metal-filled its place, the anxiety began to fade. I spend a lot of time in awe at Barry’s casual approach to this stuff, he makes it look easy, and it helps put you at ease when he’s cutting gigantic chunks out of the car.

We bolted the doors on and added the door seals to ensure the perfect fit between the drip rail and the door gap. Barry started tacking on the roof, and before you know it, the car looked a lot less like a skeleton and more like an 86.

Barry lined the roof up until he was happy with the fit, clamped it in place and started tacking it onto the car. Slowly working his way around, ensuring everything looked perfect. There were no Fuck offs at this point. When he’s in deep concentration, he goes quiet and gets sucked into the work. This is where I stand back and try not to distract.

In the middle of the roof surgery, Josh made a new inner front panel.

The guys rock up to say hello.

Barry works his magic, and my anxiety disappears. Once the roof went onto the car and the B pillars were closed up, I started to feel much more optimistic about the build.

Funnily enough, that roof is the exact colour the car was when new!

What a weekend! Looking back through these pics I can remember just quite vividly just how anxious I was to see the car in this state. Barry wanted no one at the shed as he tried to focus on the roof surgery. I think we did most of the work early in the day to avoid the distractions.

Looking at these pics, you can see just how good of a fit it is. It’s such a satisfying feeling, knowing that we tackled what would have otherwise been an unseen chunk of rust under the roof that would most likely come back to haunt further down the road.