How To: S14 Hardtop to Sunroof conversion and vice versa

[C3Sierra_S2000]

This article is for those of you who either have a sunroof and want a hardtop or ones like me that wanted a sunroof and had a hardtop car instead. This requires a lot of work and of course paint but if you are painting your car already then it isn't that much more to do.

First of all if you have a sunroof car and you want a hardtop you can order the roof skin from Nissan and you are good to go. If you have a hardtop and you want a sunroof then your best bet is to find a complete sunroof car in a junkyard. I purchased the whole setup for $200. I had the roof cut low on the pillars and the junkyard included the roof section, headliner, complete sunroof mechanism and an almost complete wiring harness. To buy all of these parts new would cost you well over $1000.

1: Remove interior completely. I left the dash but we covered it with a heavy blanket to keep it from being burned by sparks.



2: Remove all the trim surrounding the windows.

3: Remove all the glass. The windshield, rear glass, and side glasses will have to have new rubber seals ordered for them as you have to cut the originals to get the glass out.





4: Drill the spot welds out. The factory roof skin has seams at the front and rear pillars very close to the top of the car. All the other seams are in the glass openings and is completely spot welded on.



5: Remove the roof skin.







6: Reinstall the roof skin whether it be the sunroof one or the hardtop one by welding in at the spot welds.

7:The following is what I found for wiring of the sunroof on a 97 SE. If you installed the factory sunroof the wiring harness plug is at the top of the dash on the right hand side. The factory wiring has the additional 2 wires that you need to make the roof work. The plug is references as R1 and has 4 pins.

Pinouts:

1 R/W Door pin switch ground2 R/B +12V from battery constant power3 B Ground to chassis4 W/B +12V from power window relay ignition switched (approximately 12 gauge wire)

Pin 3 and 4 are what you will have to add to make the spotlight and the sunroof work. The sunroof motor grounds itself through the chassis. The small gauge ground is for the spotlight.

If your car does not have the wiring needed then you will just need to connect the wiring according to the pinout.

If you bought the sunroof setup from a wrecked car then you have to do the same process on that roof section as well to separate the roof skin from the frame.

Finished product minus body filler. As you can see there is virtually no body filler required.


Modified by C3Sierra_S2000 at 11:29 AM 10/18/2008

[heartofaskyline]

thats freakin sweet

[Hooked on 240]

sweet!

[NISSAN240SX12]

This is a great write up! Good job. My roof is rusted out. doing it this way looks fairly easy!

[ThuG LyFe]

nice i wish i had the skills to do it. ihave some aftermarket pop up roof and i'm not that fond of it but w/e.

[assassin7420]

Heh, I want to replace my sun roof with a hardtop. I just don't feel like doing all that work. Plus the dents in my roof skin.

Im just going to evercoat the **** out of it and deal with not being able to have a cusco cage .

[C3Sierra_S2000]

Heh, I want to replace my sun roof with a hardtop. I just don't feel like doing all that work. Plus the dents in my roof skin.

Im just going to evercoat the **** out of it and deal with not being able to have a cusco cage .

If you put bondo in your roof you will regret it as it will crack out. There is a lot of movement in that roof. My buddy that did mine is in GA. We are about 3.5 hours west of Savannah if you are interested in having the roof swapped. I think I might even still have a roof skin and headliner. I would have to call the shop and ask.

If you decide you want to do it then PM me and I will get you a quote.

[assassin7420]

Its not in the back of the roof, Its in the front where the sunroof support is. That part wont flex. Also, IF you use bondo on anything its going to crack out. Bondo sucks *******.

Evercoat however is awesome.

[137]

If you put bondo in your roof you will regret it as it will crack out. There is a lot of movement in that roof. My buddy that did mine is in GA. We are about 3.5 hours west of Savannah if you are interested in having the roof swapped. I think I might even still have a roof skin and headliner. I would have to call the shop and ask.

If you decide you want to do it then PM me and I will get you a quote.

DO THE SWAP DONT BE A CHEAP ***, HERE IS MY CAR AND THE PREVIOUS OWNER DID THIS BULL****!!!



I've purchased 1, 5, and 6 and will be swapping a sweet sunroofless skin back onto my car and will have a nice headliner in my car finally. Screw gutting my interior again...

[C3Sierra_S2000]

DO THE SWAP DONT BE A CHEAP ***, HERE IS MY CAR AND THE PREVIOUS OWNER DID THIS BULL****!!!

I've purchased 1, 5, and 6 and will be swapping a sweet sunroofless skin back onto my car and will have a nice headliner in my car finally. Screw gutting my interior again...

Wow that is pretty bad. There really is no way to weld that roof without it warping horribly and that is why people end up with a ton of filler on top. Thanks for the pics for the thread. Great incintive to do it right.

[sebazztard]

****ing awesome write-up. i was wondering how a diy would be for this project. much better than cutting and fabbing a universal in. + 10000000000

[GBorrelli]

Excellent write-up!

[MastaYu]

very nice