Continued...
Now we can free the canvas from the old fixings. There's 3 attachments, 1 glued and 2 taped.
The glued section is a small flap of material that's inserted into the rear retainer and glues to the main canvas. Mine was completely unstuck. I'm not sure if this has any mechanical use in holding the top down, my guess is it's more a weather strip than anything else?
The main top is first taped to a flexible piece, then folds over it into the same channel that the rubber we removed runs in, and has another strip of tape holding it in place in there. The original tape seems thinner than the 3M stuff, more like simple sticky tape, but the extra width didn't seem to matter in putting it back together.
Clean all the old tape of as best you can, and clean the whole area with IPA. Then run the 3M tape in the same places you removed the old stuff from. I also put some down to replace the glue, as it's all I had to hand, and there was just enough on the roll to do so...
Now you just need to peel off the red backing tapes and carefully pull and stick the top back into the proper position (I followed the original fold creases as best I could). I did find the glass window to be a bit of a pain here, you might need to manoeuvre it around a bit to get the slack that the top needs to fit correctly. I'd imagine the plastic window would make this step easier.
The re-insert the rubber strip into the channel, making sure it's fully pressed into place. Just work your way back and forward pushing it into place,
...and checking from underneath as well, as there's a small flap on the rubber that should slightly overlap the lower rim.
...And that's it! Only took an hour or two to fix.
I gave it overnight with the top closed but unlatched for the tape to take, just in case. The final result... no more sagging... just needs a good clean now!
Hybrid Mode
