Blackbird Fabworx Roll Bar Install

Well, It Finally Showed Up

 After about a week and a half after ordering it, my Blackbird Fabworx Single Diagonal Rollbar showed up at my apartment via UPS Ground.

I was expecting it to be delivered to the complex Manager's Office, but instead the driver dropped it off in the hallway in front of my door.

I'm Here!

This meant I got to lug the package back up the stairs and outside to my detached garage.

Fine.  (I can use the exercise.)

So I got the box moved out to the garage and started tearing into it.

Unboxing

The bar was well boxed and protected during shipping.  It took me about 15 minutes to completely extract the bar, and hardware from the box.

Most of this was due to the large amount of packing material, and tape protecting the powdercoated surface of the bar.  It protected everything quite well, just made cutting everything loose "fun".

There's A Roll Bar In There

Once I got it loose and free of the protective materials, I got my first good look at at the bar.

Ooh!!  Pretty Welds!

Nicely Made Mount Plates

Excellent Powder Coat Job

My first impressions of the bar, were that the fans of Blackbird Fab, were right on the money.  Everything was well made, with nice looking welds and a excellent job on the powdercoat.

The hardware kit included 4 backing plates for the mounts on the bar, along with Grade 8 Nuts, Bolts and Washers for the install.  The backing plates were also powder coated and were well machined with rounded edges on the corners.

I consulted the print out of the instructions that Blackbird's owner emailed me when I bought the bar, and did an inventory of all the parts.  Everything was present.  Time to get started.

Let The Slaughter Begin

I did the install pretty much by myself.  Despite what some YouTube "mechanics" might say in their videos, you can in fact do this by yourself.

  It's just a pain in the ass without an extra set of hands, but meh...it can be done.

So, I started by removing everything that was in the way.  I had already pulled the hard top and stored it in my apartment the day before the bar arrived, so it made the interior removal a lot easier.

Before

After

Seats:

First things to go were the seats.  You could do this with them in installed, but it was literally eight 14mm bolts, and took about 3 minutes to pull.  You'll want the extra room this affords.

Rear Carpet:

Removing the rear carpet is a fairly easy process.  I believe there are four 10mm threaded fasteners at the base of the carpet behind the seats, and the rest of the fasteners are plastic carpet trim plugs.  If you can, use the proper tool to remove them, Panel Clip Pliers. If you don't use these, and go after them with a flat head screwdriver, and a pair of needle nose pliers, you WILL BREAK MOST OF THEM.

Like I did.

Luckily, there's place online that sells them in bulk.  25 plugs for about 7 or 8 dollars.  They only come in black, but it beats paying $2 a plug from the dealership.

Parcel Shelf Carpet:

Same thing as before.  Remove the trim plugs and pull the parcel shelf carpet off.  The carpet has a large sound deadening panel glued to it.  I pulled mine off like a dumbass, and had to wrestle with a it a bit when everything went back together.

Trim Pieces:

Remove all the trim pieces on either side of the car.  Most of these parts are snapped in place, and can be removed fairly easily.  Some of them have plastic push rivets and screws holding them in place.  My car came with a factory windblocker, so it had to come out before I could pull all the panels off.  At this point, you should also go ahead and remove the parcel shelf cover.  It's held on with a bunch of 10mm bolts.

Soft Top:

The bar can be installed with the soft top in place, but is MUCH easier to do without the top in place.  There are three 12mm bolts on the inboard side where the top frame bolts to.  There a number of nuts holding 3 U-Shaped brackets under the softop window towards the rear.  These need to come out as well.  Disconnect your defroster harness, and get ready to lift the whole thing out of the car.  This is one of the places where having an extra body would be handy.  The top assembly isn't that heavy, but it is awkward to handle by yourself.

Once that's done, it's time to start making irreversible mods to your car.

Seatbelt Mods:

Unbolt the seatbelt guides and retain the mount bolt.  You'll need it later.  Remove the upper screw/bolt on the seatbelt reel along with the lower.  You'll be reusing the lower bolt, and possibly the upper as well.
Break off the locating tab on the reel to allow the reel to move inboard with the lower bolt attached.  Loosely install the mount bolt on the reels and bring the top end of the reel as far inboard as possible, while allowing the reel to still function.
Mark a hole with a centerpunch and drill a hole that allows a bolt to hold the reel in this position.
For my car, I had to scrounge in my bolt bin to find two appropriate metal self tapping screws to do the job.
Remove the lower mounting bolts once the seatbelt reels are in place.

Cutting/Trimming:

Now you need to start making some cuts, to allow the rear legs of the bar to clear the parcel shelf.
At this point you have two choices.  You can remove the minimum amount of metal to allow the bar to clear, and maintain a neat appearance or you can cut more metal out and have an easier time with drilling the holes for the rear mount feet.  Your choice.

I placed the bar in the car temporarily, which was another point where someone to help, would have been great.  With the bar in place, I "eyeballed" where I thought the rear bar would pass and estimated how far back.  In the interest of making it look as neat as possible, I cut both sides with approximately the same dimensions, and tried to follow the contour of the metal when possible.

Rough Estimate

Cut Too Far Back

Same Here, But It Made It Easier To Drill The Holes For The Mount Plates

Bar Set In Car

See?  Cut It Too Far Back.

 
I had to make a few adjustments on my initial cuts, but it didn't turn out too bad.  I used a electric die grinder with a cutoff wheel for the majority of the cuts.  The rest were made with a hacksaw and a electric jigsaw.  Once I had my final cuts made, I dressed the sharp edges of the cuts with a mill and bastard file.  I also tried to use a half round file to radius the sharp corners of my cuts.

I also placed the Parcel Shelf cover back on and trimmed it as well with the same tools.  The edges were also dressed and radiused as best as possible with the files.

The cut edges of the Parcel Shelf in the were masked off and had POR-15 applied to the exposed edges of metal, to try and prevent rust from forming.  I also hit the areas where the rear mount feet would be bolted to the car.

Grey POR-15

Hopefully No Rust

Drilling:

At this point it's time to place the bar in the car and start drilling holes for the mount plates.
Got the bar back in and used the lower seatbelt reel bolts to "lock" the bar in place to start drilling the holes needed.
The clearance from the side of the bar to the old seatbelt tower was very tight, so I used two pieces of cardboard stuffed between the bar and  seatbelt tower to center the bar before I tightened down the lower seatbelt reel bolts.
Ensure that all wiring on the front mount pads are inboard of the main hoop, and outboard at the rear pad.  I didn't do this and it bit me in the butt later on.
Using a centerpunch, I marked the center of the bolt holes for the front and rear mount plates.  The rear mount pads under the parcel shelf already lined up (mostly) with existing holes in the body, so two mount bolts were dropped in place to try and keep everything centered.  The holes for the rear pads are kind of difficult to access easily, so it might be easier to get at them from the bottom of the car.
Drilled the marked holes in the front pads with a smaller pilot bit, then went to the final size.  I hit the freshly drilled areas with POR-15.

To get at the rear to drill the holes required, you need to jack the rear end of the car up, remove both rear wheels and pull the wheelwell splash guards.
Using the rear backing plate as a template, I got the holes marked with a center punch and drilled my pilot holes.  Depending on the position, it might be easier to drill from the bottom or the top.  Once the final holes were drilled with the right sized drill bit, more POR-15 was applied to the holes.

Mounting:

Per the instructions, I applied a generous amount of RTV to the mount plates where the holes were drilled and through the holes themselves before tightening everything down.
During the final tightening process, I also kept the doors of the car closed to make sure nothing was not aligned when the bar was tightened down.
Once it was tightened down at all 4 mount points, I reinstalled the rear wheel well splashguards and wheels to put the car back on the ground.

Note Where The Wiring Is.  That's Not Correct.

Bolted Down With Black RTV

Bolted In!

Trimmed Parcel Shelf Cover

 Finishing Up:

The Seatbelt Guide gets relocated to tabs welded onto the rollbar.  The original bolt that mounted the guide to the car, will get cut down and reinstalled on the tabs on both sides of the car.

The trim pieces will need to be reinstalled after being cut and modified to fit.  Blackbird provides a diagram that shows where to cut, and it's fairly simple to do.  Just take your time.

Trimmed Pieces

Side Trim

Remember the wiring on the Driver's Side near the front mount plate?  Turns out in order for the trim panel to fit properly, it needs to go behind the main hoop and not in front of it. Since the connector is rather large, and I wasn't about to unbolt the rollbar again, I had to de-pin the connector and route the wiring properly.

Incorrect Routing

Corrected Routing

 After that, it's merely putting everything back together.  Trim pieces, soft top, seats and all the other stuff that got taken off.

Conclusion

I still haven't driven the car with the rollbar installed, because I've got the bumpers and hood off to get repainted.  But, I can already tell it's made a difference to the integrity of the car.

My D/S Door has always been hard to close, requiring a very firm "slam" to get it to shut. It now requires far less force to close properly.   Which isn't conclusive evidence to be sure, but I'm sure once I drive it, I'll be able to tell.

I still need to install the SFI Padding and figure out some way to cover it for street driving.

The bar is very close to my head, and buying a set of seats to get me lower in the car may have just taken precedence if I'm gonna drive this thing on the street.

Overall, it wasn't that hard and I'm pretty pleased with the result, even if I wish I had done a few things differently.

I'll get it right on the next one.

Alpha, Mike, Foxtrot.....