It was out a few years back.I can't remember what mag it was in.They show you how to cut down a stock folding top for a chopped windscreen.Anyone have it?
How far is your windshield chopped? If it's the usual 2" I think you could make the stock top work by drilling a new pivot hole and shortening the angled piece that goes to the pivot strap that's on the body. The top can come down lower as well by pulling the screws and sliding the oak bows down the aforementioned angled piece. You may have to shorten the main/rear oak bow to get the top proper down, but that's easy. Doing that in conjunction with cutting the angled arm will aid in bringing the top down toward a lower and eventually flatter profile. The flat tops are nice, but imho you don't want too flat for a couple of reasons: First it helps if the top material hits the windflow at an angle. That keeps it from balooning up. Second, too flat and you lose something in the style dept. imho. The front oak bow - or middle if you count the windshield oak header as a bow - can go down a little lower (perhaps one inch) and that could be accomplished by drilling new holes for oak bow attachment and bending the end of the top iron piece where it mounts. You can't gain much here cuz it's about as low as it's gonna go. You may not need to gain much at the middle oak bow because when the rear bow comes down by cutting the angled piece shorter, the top gets lowered as a whole. If you cut the angled piece as short as you can, you may find the rear oak bow needs to stay where it's at or not get slid down as far as originally thought. It needs to stay up so as to ***ist in creating the desired profile. Check your top profile by d****** several rows of 3/4" masking tape over bare top bows. This goes a long way towards visualizing where you're at and where you want to go. In fact, leave the masking top on for a few days and see if the profile you have is really what you want. If you have bare top irons, I recommend you install them and the oak bows et al and drive the car around for a while like that. That's going to tell you a lot about entry and exit ergonomics and you may find that raising the top an inch or two is preferable. Use stainless #10 sheet metal screws with phillips head for retainment of the oak bows. I'm guessing this is about as low as you could go without getting into cutting up the top irons arms that go to the pivot points. My 32 roadster is chopped 2" and the top is higher at the oak bows than a lot of guys run, but I wanted some head room inside. Even so, it could come down 2-3" overhead and it would be ok inside. Regardless, I like the look it has and if I did another top, I'd do the same thing - on this car. Different plans for the 31 roadster. You can use 32 top irons on these cars with one arm cut and welded. The 32 top irons on the 30-31 A roadsters makes for a more pleasing top profile than does the A top irons plus they use the later style oak windshield header etc. Didja know you can run 32 windshield posts on the 30-31's?
C9,Killer response.Yes ,I do have a standard 2" chopped windscreen.I just bought this stock 32 top from a guy on the Ford Barn.(I'm meeting the truck tonight) It's a compleat ***embled La Baron Bonney top. I picked it up for $800.Thats a hell of a lot cheaper than the $1700 they cost new.I realize I'll need to get some sewing done.I'm just trying to understand as well as I can how to approach this. SD
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