My plan is that the slider windows I'm working with the RV window company to have made can be used in multiple ways...

As part of a "soft retrofit kit" which replaces the vinyl windows of the factory, Bestop and Rugged Ridge uppers with glass sliders:



As part of full fiberglass uppers:



There's one other possibility. The upper in this next photo is just temporarily clamped together - on the outside it's the same as the full fiberglass upper, but the inside shell is the factory plastic shell. The factory canvas skin is removed and the fiberglass outer skin would be attached to the factory inner shell, turning the factory soft uppers into hard uppers with sliders and a fiberglass outer shell. Why would this be a good idea when I've already done the full fiberglass upper? It could be a very affordable option to turn factory uppers into hard uppers - the fiberglass outer skin is quick and easy to mold, so it should be inexpensive - a set of uppers converted like this should be able to be done for hundreds less than full fiberglass uppers. In this photo the fiberglass skin hasn't been trimmed to final size yet, so it's slightly larger than final size.

 

Very Nice ! I hope the companies that will be producing these either are, or will become Sponsoring Vendors here.
Perfect melding of Product to Customer.
I see you did the Canvas top on your Military M100/416 Trailer. Nice too.

 

Thank you.

If anything I design does become a commercial product, I will only mention the company selling it if that company is a forum vendor.

Thanks for that too. I'm about to begin a Safari Cab sewing project, I'll show some of that here when it happens.

 

The work to build the mold for the JK Safari Cab roof is moving along. Today I put as much plywood skin on as I could. The curves on the remainder of the roof are too sharp to do with plywood.

 

My initial design criteria for the JK Safari Cab roof included the Alpine windows, tying the roof rack into the roll bars so heavy weights such as roof top tents can be carried on top without extra reinforcement, and the ability to install multiple sunroofs. During the design and modeling phase I built several models with sunroofs. Here's one of the early cardstock models with a sunroof:



And later when I made a scale model of the roof panel in fiberglass I mocked up multiple sunroofs:



To help with the process of designing the dimensions for the internal roof structure, today I printed several full-size sunroofs on my printer to do a mockup on the roof work in progress. There's one over the first row of seats, and one over the second row of seats. A few photos.







I don't plan to install sunroofs in the first prototype Safari Cab that comes out of the molds, but I do want to ensure I design the inner structure of the roof to support the installation of two as shown in these photos, which is why I'm using the printouts to help with the final design.

 

A few photos to show how the work on the Safari Cab roof mold master is shaping up (literally ). Everything's roughed to shape except haven't done the rear corners yet, those are next.

 

Mocked up with the third brake light and roof rack.







With the alpine windows:

 

Beautiful work , a privilege to see it progress, from Concept, to each stage . Renewed appreciation for the Finished products I take for granted.

 

Thank you very much. And thanks for following along.

 

Starting work on the corners, some photos of the roughly shaped corners in place: