ROOF SUPPORT W/HARDWARE (STAINLESS STEEL)

While the body panels on a DeLorean are 304 stainless steel and will never rust, the same can't be said for the originals of this critical part of the DeLorean.

Commonly referred to as the "roof box", factory roof support is made up of three components - the top of the windshield header, the center section between the doors, and the piece over the "roll bar". Originals were made from mild steel, then painted and bonded in place on the fiberglass underbody with a special green-colored adhesive. In an example of "what were they thinking", the factory chose to adhere these pieces directly by applying the adhesive directly to the painted surface. Over the last four decades, the paint has separated from the adhesive, detaching them from the underbody and exposing bare metal, accelerating corrosion damage.

As very little of the roof box is visible without removing, at minimum, the stainless t-panel, many owners don't realize that this is likely the root of their ill-fitting doors and affecting the structural integrity of the fiberglass underbody. If you see rust in the channel on the metal box just behind each torsion bar, you're only seeing a small fraction of what is likely present on the INSIDE of the roof box, which appear to have had no surface treatment applied.

Replacement is an onerous task, at minimum requiring removal of the rear louvre, stainless t-panel, front and rear headliner, torsion bars, doors, windshield header, hinges and the roof box itself. With this much effort required, you want the best fitting part you can get, and you hope to only have to do the job once. DeLorean Motor Company reviewed the options available from others and found them lacking in terms of proper fit, always requiring significant adjustment - sometimes involving cutting and welding - to achieve even just an acceptable fit.

It was then we decided to start over from a clean sheet of paper and come up with the best fitting part possible. We went through several prototypes and fit them to several different underbodys - the DeLorean factory had 13 sets of underbody molds, all made by hand - and some variations are found in all of them. Only when we had what we knew was the best fitting part did we move into production. These roof boxes are made right here in Houston, Texas by a company in business more than 50 years!

Comes complete as shown with all new stainless steel shims and hardware, including high tensile strength hinge bolts.