FL1 roof bar caps. Bit fell into shell!

Hello. A newbie with a just new to me FL1.

I have posted a hello in the intros thread, but have an almost immediate problem.... almost certainly self inflicted.

My fiancée wanted the roof off. So, no problem..... remove roof bars. Take off roof. OK.... mounting brackets for the roof bars look a bit meh (and if anyone can tell me whether the bolts that hold the cross member are an odd size (none of my metric stuff fits and I suspect they’ve been rounded off before)).

Now, the underboot tray contained a pair of end caps if you remove the bars and mounting plates. Brilliant. First job. Take off the mounting brackets and fit the caps....

Easy......

Nope.

Bracket off. Yep. Refit gasket and mount cap. Reinsert bolts and use driver to tighten. Ting. Clink, rattle.

Something inside the shell (metal) has fallen inside the shell to the floor. Damn bolt now just spins. I assume it is some sort of plate the bolts go into clamp tight (the hole left is far too wide for the bolt thread to key into.

So, ok, take out rear light and see if I can reach it. Nope. Ask darling fiancée (slender arms). Nope. There’s two parts it can fall down. Not the one I can reach into. The other requires an anorexic mouse to access from above.

So what have I done....

Edit..... Googling gets me this link... it’s the two bolts in figure 10. They should go into something, they don’t. Because whatever that is fell inside. They simply spin away ...

https://topix.landrover.jlrext.com/topix/content/document/view?id=70815&groupId=1668

If I whip the trim panels off in the boot will I be able to access the fallen plate? Or is there another magic fix ? Or have I cocked it up already?

All suggestions welcomed (photo as below. The two bolts either side and the holes I expected to simply screw into on the shell. Clearly too large. ..)

Thank you...

The roof bar or cover plate (when no bars are fitted) screws into a threaded plate in the body cavity. However the plate in the cavity can become detached from its fixing, and drop out down of reach.

This will obviously cause an issue, as there's nothing to thread the roof bar mounting into. Sometimes you can reach the threaded plate, but other times it's pretty impossible to get at, so good luck.

Oh and I know it doesn't help now, but the roof bars don't need to be removed, to take the roof off, which is why the bars mount to the body, and not the removable roof section.

Thanks

You’re right. The threaded plate was the problem. There’s two cavities. One OK. Empty. One tiny. At the bottom of that one is a traditional dog bone shaped plate.

Head scratch. Right. Uncoil a wire coat hanger. Make tiny hook at end. Smear end in superglue gel. Let it go tacky. Use nervous small child to hold high intensity torch to shine in. So I can see.

Twenty minutes of very difficult hook a duck (any movement on hanger is magnified at the other end and it’s flexible) and I got it on to its side (so it stood up). Then hooked it and extracted very, very carefully. It’s was like the kids game, operation.

And very carefully assembled the lot holding the plate in place...

I left the hinged side of the boot until later. But at least I now know to jam a tea towel/sponge in the cavity to reduce my risk.....

(I know you can get the roof off sans bars, but I’d taken the bars off as I want to get them Powder coated as they show the usual corrosion). So just the brackets left on. And fugly. I think the bars will go back on if I find a decent soft top on eBay....

It’s not Honda levels of logical, is it.....

Thank you.