Next up was the top strap, which is attached just like the bottom one. It wasn't all that hard to do, but very time consuming. Once both straps are in place, the front side roll bar U channels slide over them to close out the roll bar box. Just like the aft portion, I had to file down the ends until they mated together in the middle.
The finished roll bar is supposed to be 1 1/2" deep when all put together. I cut a number of 2x4 chunks to 1 3/8" (subtracted the 1/16" material for each channel) to put inside the channel so I could clamp it all together and keep it the right size when drilling the front channel to the straps.
I had heard that these roll bar channels tend to be pretty rough in terms of the size of the flanges. In some areas the flanges are nice and parallel, and in others they look like a drunk sailor made them.
It's easy to see how much variation there is when the tape is lined up to the flange edges. There's not much I can do to fix it. Even though the flanges are all over the place, the important thing is that the roll bar depth is correct, which it is. In order to maintain edge distance, the rivet lines will have to wander with the flange edges as well, but once painted I don't think the rivets themselves will be that noticeable. I'll have to think about whether or not I want to fill the gap itself prior to painting though.
A lot of drilling later, the whole assembly was finished! The front side middle splice plate will be riveted inside the channel, but I put it on the outside to drill it in place. It's amazing how beefy this structure is once it's put together. The last thing I did was stand it up and measure the height at the middle. It was still about 1/16" too tall, so I filed down the legs. The last step will be to re-drill all of the holes to #30, but that's for another day.
