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Even More on Roof Rails...

To help understand how pieces fit and correlate to each other, it becomes necessary to reassemble rotten/unusable pieces for study.


Such was the case for the ROOF RAIL assemblies in relation to the Front and Rear Quarter Headers.

Above are the remains of the left and right ROOF RAIL assemblies.


Below is a comparison of the passenger side original roof rail with the reproduction kit version. Notice the strip of remaining fabric.


Here, we are assembling the original passenger Front Quarter Header (window) to the Roof Rail. This is for study purposes only...I have no intention of reusing these pieces. There are three holes in this piece that screw into the bottom of the Roof Rail. The holes are counter-sunk and the piece of sheet metal that would cover this header has cut-outs for these holes. They are located in the upper glass channel. The side that's painted black would be towards the inside of the car on the passenger side.


When it's flipped upright in its correct assembled state, you'll notice that the piece of remaining fabric is now sandwiched between the header to the OUTSIDE of the car and the bottom of the ROOF RAIL ASSEMBLY. You can barely see where the fabric begins to extend up the side of the Roof Rail (approximate center of photo).


It was confirmed on the MTFCA forum that originally, approximately six inches of fabric extended from this point, up and over the roof rail where it attached to the hard top of the car for the length of the car side, but not in the rear, as the sheet metal back overlaps the top by several inches.

A 1922 Center Door Sedan had a HARD top that was painted black.


Below we show the Rear Quarter Header (window) piece. It again, would be covered in sheet metal. A significant portion of the Roof Rail has rotted away here. This header piece is a pattern I made from an original that was broken. It would have counter-sunk holes for attaching to the bottom of the Roof Rail with cut-outs just like the front header piece.


In the above pictures, you can see how the headers are tenoned into the Latch and Hinge pillars and how the tenon from those pillars fit into the Roof Rail.


It can be surmised that the roof was the last body piece to go on the car when being assembled.


Now, just to be clear, I am not making these assumptions based entirely on my body on any of the posts that I make. I am using several hundred photographs of other people's cars in various states of repair, either obtained directly from the restorer or gleaned from the internet. I am not showing those photos as I have not gotten permission from the original photographer to share them. And in some cases, the photographer is unknown.

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