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me and my carbon fiber hard top

Posted: Tue May 29, 2012 2:26 pm
by JeremyJ069
picked up my CF top from brian last week. limped home with it all the way back to los angeles in fear of cracking the rear bolt threads.

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got to say i really like this top. SUPER light and easy to move around. one question for brian though, on the rear fender bracket i see... i think 3 screw holes. just wondering if there was any reason why you used only one of them with your ball joint bracket?
on the road back the rear brackets started to make a sharp creaking sound and i was afraid to torque down the bots too much in fear of shattering the threads. how much torque can this top take in terms of the threads?

Re: me and my carbon fiber hard top

Posted: Tue May 29, 2012 2:56 pm
by Brian
Those plastic pop rivets that hold the rear window in are real easy to remove and then you can get the rest of that white plastic removed.

I use the links for holding the top on my cars because our 2007 has a full cage and our 2006 autocross toy has our AWR bar.....and we need to be able to quickly adjust the heights the top sits at (the car with cage needs the top to sit slightly higher).

Re: me and my carbon fiber hard top

Posted: Tue May 29, 2012 3:13 pm
by JeremyJ069
oh yah, all that plastic is off now. just did a temp pull off in dave parking lot before hitting the road.
what about the torquing of the rear bolts for the top? i am deathly afraid of over torquing them and cracking something.

Re: me and my carbon fiber hard top

Posted: Tue May 29, 2012 3:21 pm
by Brian
Indeed we don't need to pull the threads from the top. Thus, since you are not using the top between two cars you might add a simple lock washer and keep the torque low (15 to 20 ft/lbs likely enough if you put a lock washer on there).

Re: me and my carbon fiber hard top

Posted: Mon Jul 23, 2012 9:23 am
by JeremyJ069
hello again brian, im in the middle of constructing my own brackets for the top.
i seem to be running into some clearance issues with my roll bar and the number of bolts i am trying to put into the top.
the top comes with 3 holes per side behind the door. i would like to utilize all three but it seems i might only get 2 of them to actually work.

i know your bracket was only using on of the holes, are you having any wear issues? i would like to spread out the forces as much as possible being that the top is on a road car. i would like to use all three holes, i am just unsure about the time required to redesign / rebuild the bracket vs the need for multiple bolts.

Re: me and my carbon fiber hard top

Posted: Mon Jul 23, 2012 9:37 am
by Brian
Even on our track cars we have just the links at the sides (one bolt top, one bottom). That means total of six bolts hold the top (three bolts per side with two at the leading edge per side, and links at the trailing edge. Have not had any wear issues despite fact we are constantly switching the top from the fully caged track car to our autocross car which has just a standard roll bar. The cage in our "NC LIGHT" track car sits higher and we adjust those side links every time to get the extra quarter inch or so clearance.

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