THE BUTTERFLY'S

For the past several weeks I've been busy repairing the
structure on the underside of the roof
which holds the Butterfly's and roof rail chrome trim in place.

The structure was badly rusted like the rest of the car.


In order to remove the structure from the car I first had to remove the top
plate with the openings in it so I could get at the welds inside.
Since I had that part out I decided to fabricate a replacement piece before proceeding.

Then I removed the rest of the structure shown here:

Next I fabricated the new structure and painted the underside of it with the
KBS rustproofing I'm using for this project,
and lightly sandblasted the underside of the roof and painted the rustproofing on there as well


This is a picture of the new structure welded back in place and the KBS painted on it.


From here I had to install the roof rail trim, windshield header trim
and the butterfly's to make sure everything would fit
and operate properly
I'll be honest with you, they didn't the first time,
or probably even the 20th time.
I had to cut out and slightly move the mounting brackets for the butterfly's
many times over the next couple weeks.
It was pretty damn frustrating.
I was ecstatic when I finally got it so the gaps were all equal.
In order to remove the brackets each time I had to completely remove
the roof rail trim which is a real pain.
But I finally got it right.



These butterfly's open automatically when you open the doors.
There is a micro switch in the door jamb that energizes the
butterfly motors when the doors are opened or closed.
The motors are located in the back corners of the roof
near the turn signal housings.
Later on I'll show you the crude but genius aparatus to open and close the butterflys.

They could also be opened with a dash switch with the doors closed as seen in this photo:






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