DeLorean roof box bolt down repair

 I have heard and seen some horror stories as it's related to some owners' experiences with a rusted and rotted roof box, as well as many that are experiencing separation between some of the pieces. 

Luckily, my roof box is still in decent shape, but I wanted to take some preventative action to keep it that way for as long as possible. A sign that there may be an issue developing is by looking at where the torsion bars are secured in place just above the rear window. As you can see from my car, the brackets and all of the metal are perfectly in line with no twisting from the torsion bars.

I bought a roof box repair kit from DeLoreanGo that included bolts to secure the roof box, washers, and replacement bolts for the torsion bar retaining plates, which I didn't use because I didn't remove the torsion bars for this fix. It also included a tube or sealant to ensure a water tight seal around the new bolts. This is the part of the roof box where you will drill through. The kit comes with detailed instructions and pictures that are easy to follow.

Since my roof box was still in excellent shape, I didn't need to go down the route of removing the torsion bars, which significantly simplified this job for me. I just removed the T-panel and opened the doors, and got to this point to expose the rear portion of the roof box:

After I wiped off the dirt of 40+ years, I laid down a strip of duct tape and marked four holes where I wanted to drill. They were off-center and more towards the rear of the roof box. I then followed the instructions by drilling progressively larger holes until I got to the desired diameter.

The instructions end up with the largest hole being 10mm, but since I only had drill bits that are imperial sizes, the last holes I drilled were 3/8", which was the closest size I had to 10mm. It was a tight fit and required that I thread in the bolts instead of just dropping or tapping them in, as shown below:

Drilling through the roof box will cause a bunch of debris inside the car, so I laid a blanket down on the rear parcel shelf to catch as much of it as possible before drilling the holes. After I put in all of the bolts, I tightened down the nuts on the inside.

There's a lot of extra threads showing after everything is tightened down. I then put a cutoff wheel on my grinder and cut the bolt so it's flush with the bottom of the nut, all while trying to contain the sparks as best as possible with cardboard and the blanket.

I then used the sealant and spread it generously on the top side of the bolts and washers. The kit comes with a full size tube of this stuff, but I only used a small percentage of it for this job. Overall, it wasn't at all difficult, but I took my time and tried to contain the mess as best I could, which slowed me down.

If I would have had to remove the torsion bars to relieve the tension on the roof box, it would have been a job that would have taken several more hours. All of those steps are included in the instructions, should you need to go down that route.