Time for some Visual Progress....
Measured twice, marked out some cut lines, and went to town. Used Electric shears for most of the work, cutoff wheel on a grinder for cutting the roof cross ribs and channels.
I used some bumper jacks and magnets to support the roof during the final cuts.
And just like that, giant sunroof!
I lost my helper at this point, so I had to get creative moving the top around.
First I had to get it off my utility trailer. My 2 post lift worked fine for that, but then was about 1' too short to get it onto the van.
I wanted to try and use my Gantry to lift it, but had to get it off the 2 post to do so.
A transmission jack, hydraulic lift table and some sketchy cribbing did it.
After about 25 adjustments, I was able to lift the top sorta level. It was still barely enough to clear the roof, I had to drop the rear van tires down to 7psi for a couple extra inches of clearance. My Gantry frame will still go 1' higher, I will make that adjustment if I need to remove the roof.
I tried using the bumper jacks again, but they didn't work very well. I have to lift on the frame, and it is outside of the roof cutout.
With all of the extensions on one set of arms, I was able to lift high enough to get some of the cribbing out, one end at a time.
Almost down...
Last thing I did last night was to build these corner lift points that should allow me to drop the top all the way to the roof to determine what else needs to be done.
I figure the top will probably be raised/lowered at least 10 times in the next few days to figure out how to make this 3rd gen top fit my 4th gen van.