converting a tin top to westfalia

how hard is this to do and how much would it cost for a garage to do it ?

 

My advice would be sell the tintop and buy a Westy instead. Westy's are based upon sunroof busses, if you have a sunroof Bus maybe it's a different story.

 

Or get a westfalia tin top interior.

 

Depends exactly what you want/need , do you want the bed upstairs or just want to stand up ?

 

bed upstairs

 

If you arent DIY ing it then at £50 an hour plus parts its going to be cheaper to sell the tintop to somebody who wants one and buy a Westy where the sunroof metalwork was built in.

And as a DIY er you would most likely have to find a good sunroof roof or Westy roof and cut your roof off and weld the replacement in...except the replacmement roof will most likely be rustier than your tintop because there are more places for damp to hide with a sunroof or a fibreglass structure sitting on the metal.

 

There is a company that makes and fits Westfalia roofs if you google hard enough.

 

https://www.spaceroofs.co.uk/index.htm

 

That's them. I finished the fitting of one for someone who bought as a kit, had a local place fit it...but they gave up when the canvas didn't match the hole from a previous top. I had to adjust the hole size.
The top itself was excellent and these particular people highly regretted not having spaceroofs do the whole job. The inconvenience and cost of sending it to East Anglia and back from the Lake District for me to panic weld up the roof in time for their holibobs plus their failed fitter back home exceded the price spaceroofs had quoted.

 

I have fitted a late (rear hinged) westfalia roof to my van as is gives a largish double roof bed while retaining IMO the best structural strength of any pop top.

The early (front hinged) roof uses a sunroof hole and has a smaller bed or hammock.
The late ((rear hinged) roof uses a specific factory pressing to achieve the larger hole / larger bed.

For my conversion I imported an original westfalia metal roof from the states. It is a lot of work to swap the roofs over.
If my original roof was not in need of a lot of repair I would never have gone for the conversion.

The original late westfalia roof hole has some features that I would want to retain it f I was going down the space roofs type route.
1. Strong steel central cross brace welded properly to the cant rail.
2. Steel return lip on the edge of the hole running down to the cant rail welded on.
3. Large steel strengthening bracket under the hinges that is welded to the cant rail.

 

I have the same setup on ours, an original late westy metal roof grafted in to replace a rotten old english roof. Capped off with one of the nice Spaceroof poptops.