Has anyone installed a sliding ragtop in their hhr? street beat customs makes ragtop kits, looks shiny but i wonder if any roof reinforcements might have to be compromised i would like to remove my headliner and nose around, not sure if i could get it back in though.. changing my "why is that there?" light over to blue was hard enough for me any help would be wonderful. thanks!

 

I had the same idea. I think an ol skool slider would be sick on the HHR. I think someone mentioned problems because of the cross supports but I haven't got a proffesional opinion. Good luck and keep us posted on your findings.

 

You'll probably have to take out the cross supports to do the slider. It should be reinforced enough with the slider frame though. Call Streatbeat and ask them, they'll know for sure. If you don't have the sun roof in there already it would be a great add on. Just make sure you remove your interior completely before you begin cutting the roof

 

It'll kill the wholesale/resale value of the car, but it looks awesome. You'll need to plan on reinforcing the other structural parts of the car, like the rear hatch area, floor behind the rear seat, and the front cowl with thick steel plates.

 

You would still have the surrounding roof area to keep everything in shape right? That's the way I see it. I would think that it would be fine. People do it to vehicles all the time and I never hear about reiforcing problems. Maybe I'm wrong here, but who knows.

 

getting mine done over winter.
3' slider

 

You have the surrounding roof area, which actually doesn't have a whole lot of structural integrity once the main members on the B and C pillars have been cut. Those beams are high-strength steel and are going to be a beeyotch on sawsall blades. Might as well break out the plasma cutter at that point. You're essentially making a convertible out of the car and unless the floor, corners, and sides of the car are reinforced you're going to have door sag and cowl shake up the wazoo.

 

Now maybe this is wrong, but couldn't you weld in some strength on the underside? I know the old VW beetles when convertible had supports welded to the bottom of the pan. Maybe this would work here to?

 

Probably. It just depends on where you put them and only a good customizer or structural engineer could tell you the most effective place to put them. Put simply, the car isn't going to be the same after you cut the supports out of the roof. It's going to handle, ride, and sound different going down the road.

Look at the VW Cabrio, Beretta, Cutlass (W-car), and PT Cruiser convertibles and you'll see what happens to a FWD unibody car when the roof is cut up or cut off. A lot of structural re-engineering went in to making those cars safe for the road again. I would take a look at the old J-body convertibles to see what they did to strengthen those cars after C&C cut off the roofs.

The hatch and the tub area behind the rear seats is probably going to be the area that needs to be strengthened the most. The doors will not line up if the B pillar area is not reinforced as well. The B pillars are going to try and fall outwards away from the car with no structure there.

 

I wanted to put one in too. I saw one for sale on Craigslist list in a 06 hhr it was a full length one the sold fast the guy that owned it said he had over 50 relying to it just because of the top he said he finally accepted a offer for 9500 was ask 10,000 was a stock LS other than the top