Couldn't put the roof on my Supra!

Only wimps take their body problems to frame shops... ;-)

That is not rare. There are bars to stiffen things up. Check a high performance shop.

Normal body flex - when you put it on flat and level ground, everything mated up fine, right? Unless the body is severely rusty or has been hit hard and fixed badly in the past, there's nothing to do.

AFAIK all convertible unibodies have to be seriously stiffened up at the cowl, door sills and rear suspension sill to put back some of the stiffness you lose by cutting the roof off - they are either the same profile body stampings made of a LOT heavier gauge metal, or extra members added inside the normal ones. Those stiffeners are welded in place at the factory when they make the unibody shell.

It was a lot simpler to build convertibles when all cars had conventional frames - they just used heavier framerail members and they were pretty much done.

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Fix it right, cut the Oak tree down, tear out the drive, have the stump and roots of the old Oak tree pulled out, pour a new drive.

Well, the tree's gone, and the stump's been ground out (a couple years ago) So I guess all that's left is leveling and retarring...

The one behind the rear seat is bolted in.

I don't know about this car, but the Stiffeners in my Caorolls GTS are bolted in as well.

(pssst...I know that... ;)

Yeah, that's why I'm wondering about taking it to a frame shop. These guys are *REALLY* good, they have state-of-the-art laser stuff and a tech to match. We use them when we had a car come in out of whack at the dealer I was working at. They send the car back within .001's of an inch!

If everything lines up on flat, level ground, then there is nothing to sort out. The stiffeners are in the cowl, door sills, and under the rear seats. I think the roof is a little beefed up too. My dad had the roof off on his Supra once, and all the shaking made him think something was wrong with the car. The dealer and I told him that was normal for the Sport Roof Supras, and he never took the roof off again.

I asked the girl I bought it from how much it shook with the roof off and she said, A fair amount.

Not as bad as a convertible, but there is a pretty good amount of cowl shake.

But, what good is having a Sport Roof if you don't *USE* it! That's 3/4 of the fun!!!

What year did your Dad have?

I think he had the first model year of the first 2 or 3 series, then I arranged a BMW 5 series, then it's been Lexus LS since Lexus came out.

hmm, your car has a unibody sitting on great big (huge) soft rubber donut looking doo dads that are isolation mounts between it and the front and rear sub-frames. They are the isolation point between the road and your butt and if your driving on the highway and make the car sway left/right/left/right it's real easy to feel the uni-body floating so to speak.

Maybe that's what your feeling because I doubt your Supra's unibody is bending back and forth with every bump in the road. Heck mine has never even had the wheels aligned and I've got my fair share of air (woops) in that car.

Tightening these mount's is in the maintenance schedule too I believe!

Just out of curiosity what does your Supra weigh? (3,450 pounds?) I thought the roof option did not really add weight.

Mine has the solid roof, manual transmission, no turbo and the door jamb label is GVWR 4460 pounds.

Dan

Interesting. THe door jamb label lists the GVWR as...

What year is yours?

Actually, over the three years I have been driving it, the roof is getting harder and harder to replace. The driver's side front bolt takes 21 turns and that corner sticks up higher.

The caveat here is that the suspension bushings are worn on the passenger's side (hmmm...the same side that was on the lump in the driveway) and need to be replaced. It has been said that the rear bushings are the same as those on the lower control arm, but nobody can say for sure, and the prescribed method for replacing those bushings is to replace the entire assembly...at $198. Bushings for the upper arm are $38 each from Toyota, or $122 for a set of polyurethane aftermarket bushings.

Guess I won't fix the driveway after all...

Irrelevant question - the Gross Vehicle Weight Rating is determined by how much weight the tires and axles and springs can carry.

You want to compare the unladen curb weights, folks... ;-)

Then you find out how a car can gain ~500 pounds when losing the roof - the convertible top bows and fabric weighs roughly the same as the steel one, and then there's all that extra structure in the chassis and the much heavier windshield frame.

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These cars had a removable steel/fiberglas panel over the front seats. From the B pillar back remains intact.

It waeighs 45-55 lbs, and stows in the trunk.

Or, "Just out of curiosity" I drove the car on a scale at some local yard that has one. 8)

Actually I forgot if it was my 1967 El Camino (+shell & insert) or my 1988 Supra that weighed 3,450 pounds when I weighed them both. But they were less than 100 pounds apart and that's what I was curious about.

anyway...

Even with double the HP these cars do not have any body flex problems.

Dan

Yup...