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I've been working on & upgrading my rough DC2 for a while now I thought this modification would be of interest.
Perhaps I've been spoiled by my glass-roof EF8 CR-X SiR
So this frustrated me: DC2 sunroof
The interior sunshade & headlining blocks almost half the glass sunroof, admittedly the roof doesn't open any further than that but I'm too used to the light from the fixed glass roof of my CR-X. And my disastrous Blue DC2 parts car was sitting there with it's sunroof there to play with & my (now replaced) original cracked glass to sticky-tape in the hole....
So out it came: DC2 sunroof asm.
Weighs in around 14kg, 6 of which is the glass while the padded vinyl covered & steel reinforced sunshade weighs 1.2kg on its own. Trim sunroof undertray
Cut the bottom out of the sunroof frame to match the glass size, trimming 1.4kg away thanks to the 6mm steel plates attached as vibration dampeners!
Headlining will need trimming to match & new/relocate roof light now required. Considering self-adhesive strips of LED on both sides.
I could probably do without a sunshade with the laminated metal-tinted glass that seems to have been fitted to '93-95 Integra before Honda switched to (cheaper?) toughened glass with a printed dot 'tint'. The early laminated glass perhaps too prone to cracking as mine had previously.
But... Sunshade clearance
Bent down the rear edge flange & cable guides by a few mm. So I now think I have room for a sunshade to slide much further back than Honda envisaged, back over the sunroof motor to the rear edge of the roof panel. Though to cover the enlarged opening without blocking it when slid back it will have to be two piece & much thinner than Honda's 7mm thick effort, though I might have 12mm available.
Cardboard prototype has proven too floppy to prove anything but rough sizes. Tried some steel I have about but at 0.8mm it's much heavier than I want & not so easy to form. Considering aluminium or flimsy 0.5mm steel sheet covered with thin self adhesive leather-grained vinyl wrap given the possible heat of the location.
Will need some reinforcements glued on & a turned up outer edge to hook into a revised guide rail to withstand possible wind suction when back of sunroof lifts, before sliding back & pulling the sunshade with it.
I even bought a sheet of composite Aluminium covered 3mm plastic though that also proved heavier than expected, So in the end I made my new 2-piece sunshade from 2mm thick 3-layer plywood, soaked & dried while bent over a form to match the slight curvature of the roof, arched to prevent it sagging in the middle. I almost wished I'd gone for the Alloy when the wood-grain was still clearly visible after several coats of paint. So I covered them with some thin adhesive vinyl film, reflective dark chrome on top to block heat, 'leather grained' & painted underneath to match the headlining. 10mm Aluminium strips were then glued & sewn for good measure to the front edges of both pieces for reinforcement & 6mm fabric 'ribbon' used to join the 2-pieces so pulling the sunshade closed from a small fabric tab near the front edge would pull through the 2nd piece, but the front piece can sit below the rear when slid back. The rear of the rear sunshade was also tied to the sunroof frame so It couldn't be pulled too far forward.
Sunshades
Old vs New custom 2-piece sunshade, mounted in the frame - & sliding further rearward over the sunroof motor & slightly re-bent cable pipes.
Headlining next
Cut Headlining
The headlining sunroof edge soaked in water & squashed for a week to dry out & adopt a crease similar to the factory one.
Crease edge
The headlining needed minor repairs for wrinkles in the vinyl & scratches. I tried some flexible urethane adhesive to fill these but it was difficult to apply neatly & didn't adhere quite as well as I'd hoped & could be rubbed off. I tried some vinyl repair adhesive but that tended to shrink as it dried. A friend who does vinyl repairs filled the crevices with sodium bi-carb (baking powder), solidified with super glue to provide a hard surface that could be lightly sanded & painted with a spay can that seem a good colour match.. but meant painting the whole sunroof just to be sure.
Enlarging the sunroof also meant relocating the interior light... & I didn't want it further back & out of reach/casting shadows, so decided upon LED strips held in silicon tubes sewn on both sides of the headlining, with a new 3-position rocker switch mounted between the sun visoirs to control it. I didn't want them to be obvious so painted the white background to match the headlining, it was still more obvious than I wanted so painted a strip of paper to cover the LEDs inside the silicon tube.
LED strip roof lighting
Size comparison
I also gave the upper rear of the headlining board a coat of fiber-glass polyester resin to protect it from water damage should the sunroof drain-tubes block & water instead overflow onto the headlining.. as it evidently had before, marking & warping the old headlining. AND immediately regretted it as the vinyl underneath wrinkled badly in response! But to my relief that disappeared as it dried.
The result !
Original Enlarged & sooo much bigger! Sunshade closed LED lighting
I'm very happy with the results, the extra size & light from the sunroof transforming the interior with the sunshade slid fully back.
Still working upon new front map lights since Honda's effort had to go in order to put a new 3-position rocker switch in their place to control the interior light. And I should have added a 'bump' to the edge of the sunshade with a matching detent in its guide track to hold it more securely in the fully open or closed positions... Sunshade can slide open/shut slightly with acceleration/brakes
That is pretty sweet. I almost never use the sunroof on my teggy for just this reason that it’s so damn small. It’s like what’s the point lol. If I do use it I just tilt it up a little bit. But very good work. Thanks for sharing
Wow, great guide, I thought I was the only one who thought the sunroof shade covered way too much when I just wanted some of that airy feel with the roof closed and shade open
I respect the work you did to make this mod work, it's not something I would have ever thought about on my teg, and I don't have the time or patience to do something like that. It is a very cool mod, and nice results. Good work.
^ As shown, no changes were made to the sunroof mechanism itself.
Also worth pointing out those areas of the sunroof tray removed were not drainage areas for the sunroof edge when closed (unless your sunroof drains are blocked & you are doomed anyway). And obviously some urethane windscreen sealer was also added to reseal around the 5mm(?) lower cable guides as they exited the rear of the undertray (take care not to crush those).
03-23-2019, 03:38 AM
DC2, Made my Factory sunroof 50% bigger
