After getting back home with the Scion with the taped-up roof, I had to figure out a battle plan. In the meantime, though, I had to clean up the whole roof and the surrounding area. This involved vacuuming out the broken glass from all around the channels in the sunroof frame as well as the tracks. From there I had to pull the frame from the tracks to further clean things up. The frame is held to the tracks with three bolts per track. With the track out, I was able to start removing all the glass from the metal frame. With the frame out, I had to take the time to break the remainder of the broken glass from the frame. Really it wasn't breaking more than peeling the shards from the glued surface of the frame. After a tedious process of removing the glass from the frame it was time to do some material sourcing. After checking out the prices of pleixglass, we came to a quick conclusion: fuck plexiglass. The size of the piece of plexiglass needed would've been almost $100. I could've just tried to grab a replacement glass for less than that at the junkyard. Hell, a new replacement glass is $150. So after aborting that idea, I decided to use some scrap sheet metal. Since I didn't have any single flat sheet metal that was big enough to fit, I had to take two identical pieces and weld them together then cut the piece I need from that larger piece, keeping the weld seam in the middle to at least try to keep things symmetrical. The sheet metal used was actually salvaged from an old appliance and was thin to the point that I had to carefully fan the weld gun over the seam to keep the arc from burning a hole through the metal. This still happened anyway so I had to further fan the welder over to fill in the holes. After taking more time than I care to when welding something this small and simple, I took measurements and started cutting metal from the greater piece. I had to place the two-piece panel on the roof and draw lines to mark where the edges will be when the piece is in place. After doing another fitting and trimming the front and back sides of the panel the next thing was to apply the glue. I picked up some Gorilla brand construction adhesive to use. I can go on the hope that this shit is more than strong enough to bond the sheet metal to the metal frame for the sunroof. In the meantime, I had to grease up the tracks on one side of the sunroof frame to make it be able to freely open up when activated since there was a broken piece that was making it difficult to open properly. The thing is, I needed the tracks in the open position in order to be able to glue down the panel. Well not immediately. First, I would have to apply the glue then lay the panel on top, pressing down to get the panel to make contact with the glue as I work the switch to open the sunroof. As the roof frame moves to the open position, it will move the panel with it, and press even further against the panel, allowing the glue to mash into the two surfaces even more. Once the frame is in the open position enough that the panel isn't making contact with the weatherstripping, I can put some weight on the frame to make it stay pressed directly against the frame and the glue. In the closed position the weatherstripping would push up somewhat, not allowing the panel to make direct contact with the glued frame. As you can see in the last pic along the weld seam there are some pinholes that I'll need to tend to, probably with the hot glue gun since again this shit is temporary. I just need to keep this thing from leaking if it rains. Again, I'm going on the hope that things will be ironed out enough that this shit will be fixed right more sooner than later, or I would have to concede and just source another sunroof from one of the local yards and go through the steps to remove it. One thing that I would have to take into account is the idea that I will have to put together a portable 12v power source with leads that would allow me to plug to the terminals on the relay or fuse that would allow me to feed power into the sunroof motor to allow me to open the thing up in order to reach the bolts that hold the thing in place. Without this, the sunroof will be unable to be removed and will most likely be broken by anyone attempting to remove it otherwise.
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