Technical spray on vinal tops

In the early '70's I helped my uncle put on a few spray on vinal tops. The stuff looked pretty good and seemed to last. The kit came with a couple pieces of stick on rubber that looked like seams. Than you sprayed the top on. In a couple of steps I think. The place that sold them is long gone. And my uncle doesn't remember who made them. does anyone know? Can they still be bought?

 

I installed about 10 of those back in the 70's. Haven't seen them since though.

 

I remember spraying a few tops back then, but I can't remember the product name. I know the tape (for the "seam") had a peak in it. I was in the Kansas City metro area at the time. Might have been Lockwood Paint in KCMO where I bought the product.

As far as getting the stuff now, I would think some of the finer texture bed liner stuff would do the trick.

 

If I wanted a vinyl top I would just use the real thing.

I helped a guy do this to his Barracuda back in the 60's and it looked terrible 3 years later,he stripped it off and took the car to a trim shop for a new vinyl top.

Still has the car,it's time for a new top though! HRP

 

I know that would be best. And a lot less work (some one else would be doing it). But the trim shop told my brother 1000.00-1100.00 to put a top on a car he's only going to keep for a year or two. An I can't just paint the top because of holes in it and the tops of the doors are covered. Thought this might be a cheap way out.

 

I just made a lower dash extension for my AC vents and controls. To get the finish to look like my faux leather seat cover, I used Dupli-Color bedliner spray for light texture and then Dupli-Color vinyl and fabric spray for the finish. It is very hard to tell the difference. An awesome finish that looks like leather.
Bob
http://www.bobsretrophobia.com/

 

P.S. my wife just informed me I have been spelling vinyl wrong.

 

If you must, a spray on bed liner will probably be the closest thing in texture.
I would not lay it on as heavy as I would on a bed liner.
Don't know what to use for the seam tape, but I'm sure you could come up with something.
Some bed liner kits can be rolled on with a special roller in the kit.
Cheap but effective!
KK

 

Might try the bed liner deal. This car of his has the vinyl glued to, I guess, a fiberglass shell. Which is screwed to the roof. Don't know that for sure. But that's what the trim shop told him. Will be checking it out this weekend. Thanks for the info guys.

 

If I was thinking about purchasing his car a year from now, I would much rather it was bare and ugly with a couple holes than to be covered with bed liner. At least then I would know how much work it was going to be to fix it right.

 

I remember those spray vinyl tops from about 1970. They have been off the market for 40 years.

In the 80s we got the same effect using stone guard, stand way back so it comes out rough then paint with semi gloss black or black primer and wipe down with oil. This was on some off road vehicles, to cover crude bodywork (they just got wrecked every week).

The bed liner sounds pretty good. Practice on a sheet of cardboard or plywood, until you get the texture you want. And get set to have people ask why you sprayed bed liner on the roof, no one has seen a vinyl top since the 80s.

 

Oh oh, if it is a rear drive Fifth Avenue from the 80s it has a fibreglass extension on the back of the roof covered up by the vinyl top. If you take off the vinyl you don't have much choice but to replace it.

 

Check out rattle guard for bedliner, they offer a lot of colors, the main reason I like their kits is the "grit" comes separately, you mix in how much you want for the desired texture. You could shoot the first layer fairly rough then the next layer with no grit to fill, smooth. I've used their products on 3 of my own trucks.

EDIT, can't find them, they only sold thru ebay for the last 10 years, their store is gone. Raptor makes a very good product that I have in my current truck and it's held up well, not sure how much color choice they have and the grit comes premixed.

 

cool, thanks.

 

I would think that the spray on bedliner would be the devil to get off when it comes time to paint or replace it.

 

I actually had my old Dodge done with the spray on vinyl top. . It wore well and always looked pretty good.

I kinda figured the tape "seams" would come off but they never did. It seems like truck bed liner would be pretty close.

 

Trust me...it is. That's why I'd rather be cleaning up glue and surface rust.

 

Here is a picture of my 1957 Pontiac Safari that the former owner added a spray on vinyl top to in 1970.They used a product called,"Body Schutz"(sp?) that was used to repair undercoating on Mercedes-Benz cars.No tape used bexause of the cross ribbing in the roof.It has held up remarkably well.I was going to try and remove it but have decided to leave the exterior as found.The reason it looks shiny is it had just been washed.Oh yes;it also has red cobwebbing over the white inside the insert.Used to have red tinted windows via window spray but that is mostly gone now.

 

Body Schutz is the stone guard I mentioned. The vinyl top was an earlier product, in the 80s we used schutz or stone guard as a substitute.

 

In my opinion those old spray vinyl tops always looked fake! They also were often put on at the used car dealer to try to add value on an often hail damaged car. The tape looked like tape, because you could see both edges, a real vinyl top had the seam with one side hidden by the covering material. Back then I knew a guy that would put on a real vinyl roof for a $100, he used the same Naugahyde that was used for upholstery.

 

if it was used more back then there would be less cars now with the roof rusted out lol

 

We shot some of those tops back in the late 60ty's early 7oty's. I think the tape was a 3M product. Once the top was prepared with 180 grit sandpaper we wiped it down with thinner and put the tape down.It was green in color. We also wiped the tape down and then scuffed it with a maroon Scotch Brite pad. Shot it with a pressure feed gun. I think maybe the spray was a DuPont product. It is / was tuff.

 

At a resto shop I used to work at, we would spray lacquer paint with no thinner, (or only a tiny amount of thinner) at metal dash pieces that were supposed to have a vinyl grain look to them. It would come out of the gun really stringy but it made a perfect grain pattern. There'd always be some loose fuzz on the part but it would wipe right off once the paint dried. Might also be an option. The bedliners I've seen have all had huge blobby lumps to it and not a small, tight grain pattern like vinyl has.

 

They were offered at Earl Schieb's when I was a painter there in the 70's not a big seller then

 

Duct tape, latex, paint roller.

 

The problem with rusting under vinyl tops was due to people thinking that primer alone under the top was OK, if they were painted and then the tops taken care of properly they lasted for a long time. Yes, I used to install vinyl tops for a living and personally would never consider spraying on fake stuff.

 

In the winter of 1968 I was working as a sales rep. in West End Chevrolet, Waltham, Massachusetts.
One cold, shitty, winter day a guy drove in with his panel van loaded with typical used car fluff up stuff.
He sold the used car manager the idea of trying out one of his spray on roof jobs. The old guy proceeded to take a used '64 Impala coupe, lt. blue in color and blow on one of those spray-on roofs in black.
In my opinion it looked cheesy, very fake.
We only had the one car done. After that we sent them all out to a shop in Watertown where we had real vinyl roofs applied for only $65.
That crazy trend lasted for a lot of years. The last ones I recall having done through our dealership was around 1989 or maybe 1990.
Cars became more jelly bean looking by then and the fad faded away.

 

3M Body Schutz cannot be painted over, It is useless if left out in the sun [it goes soft]

A real vinyl top is not that difficult to do [ on some cars you need to pull the windows out ]

 

Thanks for all the input... Just trying to do something on the cheap for my brother. The car looks pretty good except for the top. He puts a lot of miles on a car in a year. When he is done with this one in a couple of years. It will probably end up in a you pull it yard. So he doesn't want to do anything too $$$.

 

For a beater. Spray can truck bed liner will be ok. I use it on lots of "make it pass inspection" repairs. It looks ok and can go over bare metal, which equals cheap repair. Weld a patch in, grind it off, spray it on, and out the door.