Rev vin Evan, my youngest, is working on a sunroof skin transfer using the McGinn process with instruction from Mike Pugh and Bill Riblett.

I will post some pix of his progress as he moves along.

I just realized I instructed him to do this incorrectly but I think it is salvagable. We re-read the McGinn procedure and it instructs to drill the DONOR skin from the underside. So, we can do the rest the correct way and will have to grind the welds on the windsheild down flush.

Here is a copy of the McGinn procedure:

On your car, leave the structure intact. Dont do the method of just sawza'lling the whole roof and support pillars. THat method is for gorillas. This results in needless extra fitting, measuring and messing around. If you follow the method I outline below, you will get guaranteed perfect results and glass that does not leak, etc. The whole rationale behind it is that the support structures of sunroof and non sunroof cars are largely the same, so why disturb what does not need to be disturbed and comprimise the integrity of the car? (though we did build door braces to hold the car while the skin is off to ensure that it did not move...) Basically what you'll end up doing is swapping the roof skin only.

If you look in the drip rail you will see the factory spot welds that hold the skin to the structure. Drill through these welds--but only the outer skin just to the support structure. Remove the factory lead at the C-pillar seam with a acetlyene torch with a warm flame. (this seam runs directly in line with the drip rail at the back top of the c-pillar. The factory butchered this weld seam and leaded it. Cut the weld, taking care not to cut through the support. In the A-pillar you will need to make a non-factory cut and seam weld. Do this right across the upper corner of the windshield...

You also need to drill out the welds that hold the skin to the front and rear upper windshield frames.

The key with the donor clip is to make sure that you get enough of the parts you need...ie: you need the entire skin, sunroof panel and all attendant tracks, slides, etc. Make sure whoever cuts it gives you about 2" down each of the pillars. Prepping the donor clip is pretty much a reversal of prepping the car--ie: drill the spotwelds from the underside, taking care not to drill through your replacement skin.

You'll need to also cut off the sunroof pan support brackets from the inner roof support.

Once you've got the roof prepped, then you can start fitting it to the car...the trickiest part is fitting it on the A-pillar because its the only non-factory weld line. You will also need to carefully bend out the support tabs for the roof pan...

WElding the new roof on can be done one of two ways. You can drill the donor clip every few inches along the driprail and plug weld it, but this creates distortion on the skin that will have to be repaired. Alternately what we do is to spot weld the skin on sinking each weld on one of the old factory welds. This works well and does not distort the skin any more than what the factory did.

We've done about three 2002's and one e9 in the last year and a half using this method, and although it is time consuming, the exercise is more one of patience, thought and precision rather than brute force and fitting. It honestly can be done by one person as the roof skin is light and will really only fit correctly one way due to the interference nature of the fit. Done correctly, this method will yield a sunroof installtion that is absolutely indistinguishable from the factory.

Matt added more knowledge on this post:

http://www.bmw2002faq.com/component/option,com_forum/Itemid,50/page,viewtopic/t,285101/




He is using an Astro Spot Weld Air Drill with a 6.5mm bit. I know he needs his eye projection on. He really did not have to drill all the way down on the A pillar but he wanted the practice.


He used a stiff "chisel" and a ball pein hammer to seperate the two sheets of metal after drilling.


Clean holes after seperation with chisel


Look at the underside of the sunroof clip


The sunroof pan tabs Matt talks about in his process


A look at the front sunroof drain and sunvisor anchor point


One of the eight tabs that have to have spot welds removed


The front tab with spot welds removed



Drilling out the roof without the sunroof






Rear drain tube looking for a place to exit


Front drain tube looking for a place to exit


Last edited by BillWilliams on 11-17-07 05:37; edited 14 times in total