Rep Power: 314

well,


my friend told me that if you don't have a sunroof like ITR
it makes the body more rigid and therefore reduces flex

no hole in the top of your car has more support for the body.....



it makes sense....is this true???

75% of the people on this site have sunroof so i might get bias answers


but is my friend messing with my head or is he actually making some sense?

 
Rep Power: 418

BS, it just sheet metal. The sun roof weighs a little bit more, so the EX's will have a tiny bit more body roll than the models without a sunroof. The support structure for the roof goes on the outside edges, not in the middle. Anyway, he's BSin'.

 
Rep Power: 0

im going with grey on this one, i disagree

 
Rep Power: 0

i agree with vinh .. !!

 
Rep Power: 0

It's true. The unit body will be more susceptible to twisting, meaning it is not as stiff with a sunroof. The question becomes how much of a difference the sunroof makes. I highly doubt that it is a big enough difference to worry about though. If you were going to road race your car in something like touring sedan class or scca then it might matter. I seriously doubt it will make a big enough difference to worry about.

 
Rep Power: 0

I'm not sure how much effect a sunroof has on total body rigidity, but I do remember one member posting about how he had replaced his struts/springs, and had not installed strut bars, and the torsional stress on is roof warped the sheet metal around his sunroof.

 
Rep Power: 0

no he was talking about changing his bushings to polyurethane...and he didnt have any bars...thats what warped his roof..if i remember correctly

 
Rep Power: 403

The only time i am going to disagree with grey with this one is here, there is a flex in the body more with a car with a sunroof. in another fourm (300zx) which about 97 percent have tee tops, and one of the members explained it very good, that there is more flex in the body on the Tee top versions. there are only a handful of 32z's without tee tops...

remember all these people on that form are like 50 with stage 7+++++ TT's, doing like 600+ to the wheels, i think they know what they are talking about.

it its as noticiable though...

 
Rep Power: 418

T-tops yes, convertibles yes. Sunroof or moonroof no if they do not intersect the structural frame. The sheet metal is just like skin, it offers no support. The bones do. The bones in our cars are the load bearing members. Although... I just took a look at the Body Shop manual for our cars and I found out that the roof is the only thing that offers support across the car up top. There are no other load bearing members that span the left and right sides of thr car. It's just the roof and the glass. Weird. Although the sun roof adds some structure, so if anything I would say that in our case a sun roof adds some support. I just don't know though, too many variables in our case to make a judgement.

 
Rep Power: 403

you know what, i bet when they make a sunroof for the ex's i think there are some special structure they probly build around it to compensate for the weakness in the over all body flex, so... humm, i don't know...

 
Rep Power: 0

the ITR actually had additional supports in the skeleton stucture to make it more rigid....so its not the samw as a normal hardtop integra really