Lowering the Roof Height

Its not a mod I would have thought of for a Scooby, but I spotted this absolutely mental Blobeye STi in a mag [built by Jap shop C.S Hiro http://www.cshiro.co.jp/], with its roof lowered! I've only ever seen this done to classic cars, mainly American metal, although I've seen a few Vauxhall Victors with it done in the UK, but as it turns out the modern Scooby shares a key bit of design with the aforementioned that makes it an ideal motor to do a roof-chop on!

The Impreza has sashless-doors, which of course means that there is no frame around the window glass and that means no alterations need to be made to the doors at all. When the roof height drops, the windows will still rise up and fill the gap perfectly, with the lower part of the glass permanently sitting in the door. In theory the four windows would each fit flush even if the roof wasn't perfectly straight. Chopping the height out of 4 normal doors separately, then matching them to the roof would be a difficult task and this makes it a super-expensive job for most motors. Examining the Scoob though, it looks like all you'd need to cut are the 6 roof pillars and this makes it a much easier job, one you could do at home in fact with enough time and ingenuity.

THEORY:

Roof-Chop:

Wind the windows fully down. Remove the front and rear windscreen, along with both wing-mirror chassis, the roof-lining, a-pillar covers, parcel shelf and unbolt the front seat-belt holsters off the b-pillars.

Sand the a and c-pillars down to the bare metal.

Mark along the base of each roof pillar and cut straight through into the cabin, without deforming the metal. You could probably do it with a small grinder, but an oxy/acetylene 'plasma-cutter' would be ideal to cut a neat curve.

Lift the roof off the car. Mark around the neck of each pillar at a suitable height for the roof to be lowered by [probably about 3 ins.] and cut them again, then file down the remaining pillar ends, as well as the cut-edges on the car body, to as flat an edge as possible.

Lower the roof back onto the car, marry the pillars to their bases and weld completely around where they meet. Grind the welds down and rub them flush to the body with emery cloth. Build up around the visible joins with metal-filler and P38-filler and sand them in a smooth line between the body and pillars. Re-paint the a and c-pillars. Shorten the plastic pillar-covers to fit and replace the roof-lining etc.

Roll-Cage:

** The rigidity of the roof is probably compromised quite a bit by this process so its essential to fit a roll-cage really to stiffen things up, but primarily for safety. If this isn't a major concern you could get away with just bolting or welding in a steel-tube down the inside of the b-pillar from floor to roof.

Windscreens:

With the roof sorted, the real challenge is to make the windscreens the right length to fit. Normal Scooby windscreens are about £200+ so a tailor made narrow one probably isn't cheap, but I've found TW Windscreens in Southampton who will make one. On the other hand, I've seen cut windscreens lying around at work done using a great grinding-disc that only damages about half a cm around the line of the cut. We reckon you could cut the bottom away from the windscreen and seal the fractured edge with epoxy-resin. Then, when the windscreen is sealed in place, make a plastic or rubber sill to overlap the bottom edge [which seems to be the case on the C.S Hiro car anyway] and a smaller one for the rear.

Seatbelts:

Belts are a major safety thing, so if you've made the mounting-holes on the b-pillars too low then its worth scrapping the lap-belts and installing racing harnesses, which the standard STi and post MY96 seats will take. Otherwise you'll need to drill a new hole further up the b-pillar if possible and thread it with a fairly large tap, but the bolt might need shortening as the gap behind gets narrower at the top.