Quote:
Originally Posted by 1795
Dan,
Very well done; you appear to have tightened up a lot of those earlier wrinkles that you were worried about. I too will be going back to your thread when I get a top. How many hours do you think that you have invested in the top? I think that you are right in that getting the top out into the hot sun may help it settle in.
Jim
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Jim/Keven - I have a lot of hours in it. Not sure I could accurately guess. Probably 4 or 5 days - maybe 30 hours. A lot of them were from being a little cautious in going to the next step. There was a lot of time spent just staring at the thing figuring out what to bend, twist, pull next. Basically the top has to be snapped down after fitting each lift-a-dot and then removed after marking where to install the next one. I can definately see where ERA gets $800 for fitting the top (I think that is right). One thing I know is that the bows are critical and have to have a lot of work to fit properly. They basically are just raw stock when you get them. I spent hours tweaking them and the windshield bow. A heavy bench vise is critical although some bending can be done over the knee. I used a piece of old heater hose to slide the bow into and a couple lengths of heavy leather over that to protect the bow tubing and my powder coat.
But I did learn a number of lessons learned that should benefit others - I will try to write down a better orgainized step by step list. It may have just been me, but it took some studying the little straps that secure the rear bow inside, in trying to understand where the snaps go. Then I realized the strap was sew to the top with two lines of stitch-work with a gap between and one side of the snap goes in that gap and the post part of the snap slips between the fabric and strap from the side. I piece of 1 inch wide metal or something can be slipped in there also to buck it up when the snap is preened over the post/back. Also, the ERA-supplied snaps have different length posts, one length for the male and the other for the female side. Of course I screwed that up - but fortunately I had a bunch of snaps left over from my leather holster building days from years ago.
Picking the lift-a-dots locations is also nerve wracking. Most of mine seem to have worked fine in the end but if I were doing it over I would slightly shifted the location of a couple of them just a little.
Cutting the bows is a crazy process. I cut 1 inch out of the main bow - in hindsight I think I could have taken only a 1/2 inch out and been OK. No cut would probably have been too tight. But it worked out OK as the top is very tight with the adjusters screwed out just 1/4 inch or less. That 1/4 inch allows the top to snap down relatively easy with the adjusters screwed all the way in. The back bow was a lot different. I need to re-total but I think I had to take nearly 3 inches out. The back bow when I started, stood about 1-1/2 inches higher than the main bow when folded together. By the time I re-shaped the corner bends of the back bow it was only about 1/4 inch higher than the main bow. And it was still slightly pushing the main bow too far forward - thus the slight bend to the rear I made in the main bow right above the hinge point. All that shortening of the rear bow corners put more length to the center which I had to cut out to get the width to meet the main bow again. But, it came out good and is really nice and tight back there now.
Enough rattling on for now. Now, I'm wondering if the side curtains can be modified to shorten them slightly at the rear so they fit in the top pocket better. I'm going to study that some.
Thanks.