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I'd be inclined to keep the car and maybe not fix the roof, but I'm surprised nobody has said anything about the risk of never being able to get a good seal at the top of the windshield. What does your body guy say about that?
^^^This. I had a tree fall on my roof and damage it, along with a broken windshield. The body shop tried to repair it, then eventually replaced the roof, but the vehicle always leaked like a sieve afterwards.
Take the money buy the car back and drive it. I wouldn’t waste the money to repair it. Save and go buy another car later when this one gets really expensive to fix or breaks down and costs too much to repair.
As far as the roof/ window leaking go buy a tube of Black polyurethane sealant from Home Depot. It’s the same stuff they use to attach the window to the frame, fill in the dent at the joint
If the Roof Outer panel is damaged, that is relatively easy to fix and not critical for safety. But if the Front Header and/or and any Roof Bows are bent, this is unsafe and should be fixed. The crossmembers and pillars act as a system in Roof Crush, they will eventually buckle at a certain load, so if a part is bent it will buckle sooner. I have designed these parts for a major OEM, this is my thing. I would be very careful about repairing this, I would total it if possible.
I agree with him. The pillars are the brunt of the structure there. The roof really doesn't do all that much. If you ever pulled a headliner down, the roof really is just a metal skin with a few braces across just to keep the roof from buckling when snow is piled on top. Other than that, there's not much structure to it. If you ran up on top of your roof and jumped, you'd buckle it pretty good.
Here's a good example of a typical roof. Just flat steel and a few braces. This is a chevy Silverado.
This is a great picture. Must be in the factory since it is not painted...But I disagree about the "braces" as not being important. The Roof structure is a system - the crossmembers ("braces") such as the front and rear Headers are critical for safety. In your picture, even the center Roof Bow is likely to be quite structural since it connects the two B-pillars together cross-car (but mostly for side impact in this case, not roof crush so much).
No crash load on the roof will be 100% vertical, there will be a lateral component to the load, so the crossmembers will also be subjected to a buckle load, as well as the pillars. The federal Roof Crush test is actually applied at an angle in both the side and front views, and the headers always will buckle eventually. If one of the headers is dmaged, they will buckle sooner.
It is true that some vehicles may have smaller narrow/thin Roof Bows that are there only to support the Roof panel, mostly SUV's with long Roofs, and are not that important for safety. But the Headers and B-Pillar roof bows are key. They should be replaced if damaged and it is wrong to say they don't matter much.
Last edited by KO Stradivarius; 08-23-2018 at 10:38 AM..
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