The bar is a 4 point with removable cross members, painted black from autopower. Most autopower bars i've seen arrived somewhat beat up from shipping (indeed Travis's bar, while unpainted, was shipped without any wrapping). Mine came double layered in thick plastic, which protected it very well during the shipping process, there's only one place where i'll need to do some touching up (more for protection from rust than for aesthetic reasons, the bar will be padded when it's in.) Let's get to the pics:
Here's the bar, as it was shipped.
One of the joints where the crossbar meets the main hoop. That's Mark's hand, he was working on a triumph or something before i came to take pics..not the first time a mechanic has gotten dirty working on a british car.
The foot of one of the rear bars, which will mount to the top of the wheelwell.
The bar comes with 4 backing plates (mount under the car and in the wheelwells to sandwitch the body between the bar feet and the plates), a mess of bolts and nuts (they give 2 nuts for every bolt, I will be replacing one of the nuts on each bolt with a Nylock nut for added security), and two longer bolts for securing the rear bars to the main hoop assembly.
The backing plates come unpainted, and will rust without protection
One of the hoop's main feet, which mount in the rear seat footwells.
The only place where the plastic wasn't enough to protect the bar during shipping, a minor space (a quick spray of rustoleum gloss black will take care of this)
A look at one of the rear bars
At this point, i took the hardware home with me (i'll be installing the bar soon, when i can get a friend and Mark has space), grabbed 12 3/8 inch Nylock bolts from home depot, 24 3/8 inch grade 8 washers from Pep Boys, and a very angry 3/8ths inch DeWalt Cobalt drill bit to make punching holes in the body that much easier. I also picked up a can of Rustoleum autobody primer, and some rustoleum gloss black spray paint.
Priming and painting the backing plates will help them resist corrosion when they're bolted to the underbody of the car. Matt suggests that my painting these was premature, since i may have to bend them (particularly the rear ones)....he's probably right, but like i said "we'll see, mr smarty pants." Stupid engineers think they know everything...(mutter mutter).
ROUND 2!
Moving right along, I stripped the rear interior a couple days before heading to McB to get the bar in, so I would be ready to dive right in when i got there. Take out the rear seats (remove the plastic C-shaped clamps from the base of the outer edge of each folding seatback, push that side towards the wall, and lift up from the middle peg, repeat for other side, the trunk carpet comes with it, then undo the visible bolt holding the back of the seat cushions in, and pull up hard on the front edge, towards the outside)...Remove the rear chassis brace (and your child seatbelt loops if it's a newer ITR), take out the rear plastic (a bunch of the pop-tabs where you pop in the middle part and then pull it out), then take out the side plastic (two bolts in different locations per side, a pack of plastic screw-tabs, and then pull hard starting in the back, don't forget to disconnect the rear light wire). Remove the speakers too, helps make life easier, and they're pretty useless anyway (you'll be amazed how light these mexican specials are if you haven't beheld the might R speakers yet). Finally, taking out the seats (four 12mm bolts each, unplug your seatbelt light and tuck it under the carpet if you haven't yet, it's annoying) and the center console (2 screws on each side, plus two under the parking brake) will leave you a car that looks a little something like this:
Interesting sidenote here, I drove with a friend to go-karting in Columbus with the car's interior stripped (hence the rear speakers beign in, for what good they did)....at 80 MPH, the rear of a stripped R is pretty freaking loud...there is no sound deadening on the metal like most cars, so you hear every pebble you drive over...the wind and tire noise is impressive...and little things like the constant whine of the fuel pump and the sloshing of gas in a baffle-less R tank whenever you come to a stop...it's pretty amusing, but i wouldn't recommend it for long trips. A track car, on the other hand... :)
Okay, our first order of business is to make sure we're not going to be crushing anything with the bar. The driver's side wheelwell has a wire bundle and the antenna wire running on top of it, so we pull out some white wire-holding tabs and remove the foam pad holding the antenna wire down.
before
after, be mindful of these as they tend to want to return to their home, and we can't let them do that yet.
I removed the plastic from most of the bar, and touched up the few minor scratches with some Rustoleum gloss black. Here, John models the bar with his super-freaking-bright fleece thing. This is the also the first time I put the rear bars on the main hoop. Take note of where the bolt holes are.
Now, get a friend to help you get the bar into the car, hopefully without taking any extra paint off the bar or your car. Let's see how she fits!
My bar fit pretty damn well right from the word go...it took a little pulling to get the rear bars to get past a few ridges, i'd recommend using the plastic that the bar was wrapped in to protect your car's interior paint as you move metal near metal. I assume the same bar is made for GS-Rs, notice the headroom.
Next, be sure you wear some beat up jeans with a hole in one knee. Then, when fiddling in the hatch, try your best to scrape the exposed knee on the edge of a JDM rear strut bar tower, while crouching so the skin is super tight and it will do maximum damage. Yelp, then get out and hobble around some....when you feel blood trickling down your leghair, ask Mark where the first aid kit is...put a bandaid on, and when it won't stick well due to all the blood, take some duct tape and kill two birds with one stone: No more hole in jeans, bandaid is staying ON.
Not too tight, or you'll loose feeling in your leg and foot.
Okay, this is where some options present themselves. The legs of my bar weren't going back far enough with the carpet in place, and I planned on cutting out the carpet anyway, so i removed the bar and worked on the carpet. If you want to, you can just drill through and squish the carpet, but i don't think i'd recommend this. In hindsight, i'd probably cut the carpet into Xs like Matt suggested, and that way it would come up over the bar...this would look pretty clean, if done well. I decided to use the backing plates as templates, and cut the carpet out around the metal. It looks fine, not like anyone is going to see it back there anyway...but if you're a show-car person, you might want a more fancy install. make sure you're not sacrificing safety for looks tho. What follows is my methods, your mileage may vary.
TAKE THE ROLLBAR OUT!
Take a small thin crowbar or whatever you can find, and pull the three plastic tabs that hold the carpet in the rear. Fold it forward, you only need a few inches.
PUT THE ROLLBAR BACK IN! HAVING FUN YET!
If i were doing this again, i'd have done the carpet before even test fitting...well, i could have gotten lucky, but c'est la vie.
Time to start putting holes in your car while you're still paying for it!
As a universal rule, the right tool for the job will reduce your pain and suffering tenfold. The metal in the body isn't that thick, but why deal with a regular drillbit. Go drop 10 bucks on something super angry, you'll be glad you did. Now, make sure your bar is where you want it to stay, because we're about to pass the point of no return.
Starting with the footwells, drill a hole on one side...
and put the bolt in to keep it from moving around. Mirror this hole on the other side.
Now, do a second bolt. You won't be able to get to the third hole on the passenger side beacuse of the diagonal crossmember, we'll get to that soon.
Make sure the backing plates line up as well.
Now, move on to the rear...you don't want to drill into your tires, and while i never got near them, i used two blocks of wood and some tape to protect the tires.
Time to put holes in the back...same as before, mirror your actions, one bolt at a time.
Now you have 11 of your 12 holes. At this point, i removed the rear bars, and folded the main hoop into the front of the car, rather than take it out again. Replace the carpet holders, and use an awl to locate the holes through the carpet.
The awl goes in...
move up to a larger phillips-head screwdriver
and finally, put the bolts in through the carpet.
now, put the backing pate on top of the carpet with the bolts to make sure it's in the right place...double check that you've got the holes the right way.
Now, we're going to take our utility knife and cut the carpet out. Part of the carpet is thin, part has super mess padding that doesn't like to be cut (but responds well to tugging) Cut a little inside the lines.
Now we have plate and foot-sized holes in our carpet.
Here's the plate in with the carpet cut out...drill that final hole with the plate to guide you.
If you want your interior in, now's the time to put the sidepanels back in the car, before you bolt everything down.
Snug the clips around the bar, but leave the back loose.
The bar goes through the speaker hole...you may have to trim some of the plastic as it's a tight fit, i'm sure there's variation between bars.
Now we're ready to bolt it down!!
Put the bar back into mounting position, with all the holes lined up and ready to take their bolts. I put mine in with all the bolts going up into the cabin, to prevent scraping of the ground and digging into the wheels if i ever lower the car. I also bought washers for everything, as they did not come with the bar. Rather than use two regular nuts, I opted for one nylock nut at Mark's recommendation.
Using some serious Wurth body-seam sealer to keep out moisture and such, goop up the plate and get ready to put it on. (this first plate was the result of a failed loading into the caulking gun, hence the haphazard application). Tighten everything down pretty hard, you'll hear some creaking as the plates sandwich any contours in the body flat. It helps to have a friend holding the bolt with a wrench while you ratched the nut down inside the cabin.
Here's a fenderwell plate after being secured.
and a bottom plate
My god, i have a rollbar!
The seats can go all the way back and recline a few clicks with everything in place...plenty of clearance.
Yay! Now, we put the interior back in...
The only problem I encountered is that the passenger side rear seat hits the diagonal bar if you try to fold it down...i can't lock it into the mounting posts. If i were to use it as a seat, i could lock it in...but for now, i need to leave it unattached at it's base, lying flat. You can see that it's back a couple inches from the driver's side rear seat.
Sweet! The car feels stiffer with the bar in, hitting bumps reminds me of a mercedes now, there's a solid thump. Hopefully, i'll never have to use the bar for what it's made for...but, i'd much rather live to tell a crash story than go down with the ship. It's not like it won't be pulling it's weight...my harnesses just arrived, and it will serve as the perfect mounting point for the shoulder belts. Time to go do some drivin....
