Hey Guys.

I trying to find out how the roof and rear parcel shelf are constructed in Mini's
The roof on my soon to be stripped clubman is falling apart and the rear parcel shelf has been hacked to death by some f00 to install some crappy speakers.

I need to know 2 things.
1) Is the ceiling of the roof constructed the same as the Door cards, as in if you pulled it out is it easy to replace with water proofed MDF? or is it much more complex than that?

2) also, is the rear parcel shelf a seperate removeable peiece of sheet metal? or is a strutural piece of the mini? most importantly i want to know if i could remove the current shelf and replace it with maybe 5 or 7mm MDF for example.

Thanks!

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1975 Hairy Lime/White Clubby
Build Thread: http://www.ausmini.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=80657

The hood lining (I think that's what you're referring to) is a thin vinyl supported by betn/tensioned steel rods , once it's pulled out (need to remove front and rear windscreens and door/window rubbers to do it) you cna use it as a pattern to sew up a replacement one , or just buy one from the mini suppliers , or get a usable one from someone elses wrecked mini .
The rear parcel shelf is a welded in panel , I'd say semi-structural as it braces the top of the rear seat back . You can just cover it with mdf but realise there are holes under it , or get someone to weld a shelf taken from another wrecked/rusted mini or just get them to weld in a bit of body steel into the cutouts . Why oh why do people butcher these things .....

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The rear shelf isn't semi structural, it is structural. Holes cut into them for speakers are WoF failures in New Zealand. You can remedy it by either welding them up or welding a ring around the hole, or perversely enough, filling them with speakers. This is the first time I have heard of speakers being considered a structural piece of a car, but true according to the certifying engineer who spoke to our mini club.

Obviously this probably isn't the case in Aus, but worth bearing in mind if you're considering altering your rear shelf in any way.

As Angus said, it's structural. Another thing to consider is that there should be seat belt mounts in that panel, so you can't just whack a MDF panel in there and bolt seat belts to it. Well you could but you would make you a complete goose

As suggested I think the best way to go is cut the shelf from a wreck and weld it in. Then you can go ahead and make a MDF panel to fit on top of that.

And I would suggest that you make your MDF panel BEFORE you put your rear screen back in, as it's about eleventy billion times easier to do all the marking & installation without the screen in there

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Metal to burn, sparks to fly...