Loose Weight Fast: Carbon Sunroof Inserts

[BarracksSi]

Or DIY with a hammer & vacuum cleaner, and don't drive when it looks like rain...

okay, I'm just kidding... :D

[oogy-boogy]

Nice concept but I just looove my moonroof way to much on those midnight cruises.

[fishboy]

it would look sweeter painted to match the car.

[VBSI]

...and on an EX? Unless a missed a prior post of yours that says it has a turbo Si engine, then maybe, but losing the weight of the moonroof for $400 isn't worth it to me. I would never lose the moonroof for anything, and you can't tell me that you will see any increase with that slight drop in weight. My old lady would kill me if she hit the moonroof switch in her '04 EX and looked up and saw that shit...she thinks any and all exterior mods are "gay". Hell, the Atkins diet could knock that off my fat ass and save me the money.

[EtherGhost]

Originally posted by 2tacosfor$1
yea it would be alot cooler if they made it into a functional sunroof...like just a latch to prop it up. if they did that....id so buy one

Yeah, that would be awesome... or just replace the glass panel with carbon fiber, and keep the functionality. It wouldn't save as much weight as ditching the motor, etc, but it would still be pretty sweet.

[emosubaru]

i agree, it would be sweeter if it opened up.

if it's going to be fixed position, why not have a small scoop with a latch, like on WRC cars- that way you could still get airflow into the cabin at speed... maybe ditch the A/C and lose 2-3x the weight you'd lose with just the carbon fiber.

[Adam12]

Hello everyone. I just wanted to clarify a few things on the kit. First of all the screws on top. The first few kits had uncoated machine screws as in the CRX picture on the website. The current kits all ship with black coated stainless machine screws and stainless black nylocks. These are all custom fasteners we have made for this project. The black fasteners blend in perfect with the black weave. Plus they are all countersunk so they don't stick up above the roofline. This plug follows the body line perfectly and the seam dampens any kind of vibration or rubbing of the panel on the body.

As for the keeping the sunroof functional here is my $.02

We could have made a fully functional unit but the motor and track system on most Hondas are half the weight. Keeping them would kind of defeat the purpose behind this kit. Carbon may be bling bling but its more than that, the panel weighs 1 pound. I know if I were spending $400 to reduce weight I would rather have a 40lb reduction vs. a 20lb reduction. Another thing about a moveable roof is it would cost a few hundred more so really you would be looking at about $500-$600 to reduce 20lbs. I don't see this as a good value. The reason it would be more expensive is we would have to design a sealing system similar to the factory i.e. $$ engineering and tooling time. Hell most aftermarket sunroof manufacturers can't even build a system that doesn't leak. Another option would be building a panel that fits in the stock glass location. I haven't looked at this specific car but if its like most Hondas it wouldn't be as easy as it sounds for the do it yourselfer at home. This means more money in install cost. I have had this come up many times on other cars. If this was a production part it would cost more like $300-$350 retail like our other kits.

This product is meant as a performance enhancer. There is no other part on the car that you can remove and replace that will give you the performance benefits as this kit. NONE! The reason is you are dumping 35-40 lbs off the very highest point on the car. Even if you just ran the car with no hood it wouldn't give you the same benfits as this kit. Its weight up high that makes your car roll and pitch. You are effectively reducing your center of gravity. The Prelude kit lost 50lbs almost off the roof. Yes you can do this with $20 lexan and I encourage anyone to do so if they think they can make it look good. I will sell you our mounting kit if you like a sunburned head. Another thing about lexan is it expands quite a bit on a summer day. Carbon fiber doesn't expand at all, in fact it will expand less than metal. This keeps eveything looking flush even on a hot summer day.

I can see people not wanting to remove their roof but as with any performance part there is a trade off. We tried to make the trade off worth it.

[k20hatch]

I really dont like the look of them at all. Mabey if my car was just set up to autoacross or somthing and i needed some sort of weight reduction. I dunno just dont appeal to me!