ok, so I was pretty excited to find a cheap diesel A2 with a working glass roof and double din stereo (for easily adding apple carplay headunit)
but I had some concerns about opening the roof whilst driving and having it open whilst driving on our especially bumpy pot-holed streets...
it looked to me that the glass whilst open might be vulnerable as it seemed like it sticks up at a wide angle and if I were to drive over a Pot Hole of Death it might fall down a bit or get miss-aligned somehow...
in any case, I spent the last month or so enjoying opening the roof (albeit with some anxiety) until I hit a Pot Hole of Death on motorway whilst opening the roof... i heard a "crick" sound that sounded bad... and the roof wouldn't close all the way... it stopped with abut 4 inches maybe 3 inches left to go... just where the edge of roof meets the sled type thingies that are on left and right side of roof... it appeared as if the glass panel was not angled as high up as it normally is at that point before it slides further in and drops down... but I couldn't be completely sure as i was driving... it was beginning to rain after we had had a nice heatwave hence my trying to close it...
it would open up fully but always stopped at same place when closing...
when I arrived at my destination I did a quick interweb search and thought i could try and close it by pressing close button whilst standing outside car and helping to push glass panel closed with other hand...
it worked... sort of... the driver's side was 1mm or so higher than passenger side... but as it was now raining I thought I'd leave it be for now...
rain kept out of car but i had a horrible wind-noise sound as the 1mm protrusion meant it wasn't closed all the way...
a week or so later now that sun is back and no immediate threat of rain was in horizon i thought i'd try opening the roof again...
it opened up fine... and then closed fine too... it seems to be back to normal now...
although I'm going to keep it closed for now ha ha...
so, what do you guys think of making a new "mount" or "seat" for the glass panel that is less contraptiony and more simple and malfunction-proof?
there are so many ways we could do this...
1. a system that just allows the trailing edge to move up so as to make more ventilation but not opening the roof all the way.
2. a system that allowed the manual removal of the glass panel to then be places in the boot or garage etc. This would be very simple and elegant and cheap to implement but of course the trade off would be that you had to park to open the roof or close it. but the benefit is it is bulletproof and reasonably cheap .
3. a system like 2 but it would allow manual opening and closing with glass panel staying on roof(not being removed and placed in boot). Slightly more complicated and expensive but no need to put the panel in boot when you want to open it.
4. a system combining features of 1 and 2.
also we could incorporate shells for the roof panels to change the color so you could have a black roof or neon green or body coloured roof etc.
but I had some concerns about opening the roof whilst driving and having it open whilst driving on our especially bumpy pot-holed streets...
it looked to me that the glass whilst open might be vulnerable as it seemed like it sticks up at a wide angle and if I were to drive over a Pot Hole of Death it might fall down a bit or get miss-aligned somehow...
in any case, I spent the last month or so enjoying opening the roof (albeit with some anxiety) until I hit a Pot Hole of Death on motorway whilst opening the roof... i heard a "crick" sound that sounded bad... and the roof wouldn't close all the way... it stopped with abut 4 inches maybe 3 inches left to go... just where the edge of roof meets the sled type thingies that are on left and right side of roof... it appeared as if the glass panel was not angled as high up as it normally is at that point before it slides further in and drops down... but I couldn't be completely sure as i was driving... it was beginning to rain after we had had a nice heatwave hence my trying to close it...
it would open up fully but always stopped at same place when closing...
when I arrived at my destination I did a quick interweb search and thought i could try and close it by pressing close button whilst standing outside car and helping to push glass panel closed with other hand...
it worked... sort of... the driver's side was 1mm or so higher than passenger side... but as it was now raining I thought I'd leave it be for now...
rain kept out of car but i had a horrible wind-noise sound as the 1mm protrusion meant it wasn't closed all the way...
a week or so later now that sun is back and no immediate threat of rain was in horizon i thought i'd try opening the roof again...
it opened up fine... and then closed fine too... it seems to be back to normal now...
although I'm going to keep it closed for now ha ha...
so, what do you guys think of making a new "mount" or "seat" for the glass panel that is less contraptiony and more simple and malfunction-proof?
there are so many ways we could do this...
1. a system that just allows the trailing edge to move up so as to make more ventilation but not opening the roof all the way.
2. a system that allowed the manual removal of the glass panel to then be places in the boot or garage etc. This would be very simple and elegant and cheap to implement but of course the trade off would be that you had to park to open the roof or close it. but the benefit is it is bulletproof and reasonably cheap .
3. a system like 2 but it would allow manual opening and closing with glass panel staying on roof(not being removed and placed in boot). Slightly more complicated and expensive but no need to put the panel in boot when you want to open it.
4. a system combining features of 1 and 2.
also we could incorporate shells for the roof panels to change the color so you could have a black roof or neon green or body coloured roof etc.
