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Surrey hard top


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Hi all

I placed a wanted ad for a steel or alloy hard top but so far no luck as mine that I got second hand is full of tin worm ,filler and mastic hides so much!! so 

looks like I will have to look at the fibre glass option, which maybe in hind sight  I should have done first would have saved a few pounds, question is is the fit to the original back light  and screen frame good or not ? also does the original head lining fit well 

as always thanks for advice given

Chris

 

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When I recently bought my TR4A, it had the surrey top but only the soft top not the hard top.  So I did look at the fibreglass option, the opinion I got was to make sure the top has floating captive nuts.  However I was lucky in that my dealer had both an original steel and an aluminium top on the shelf, so I acquired the steel one which  has been resprayed and trimmed and was a drop on fit.  I believe he still has the ali one, but of course they do suffer from dents  so would probably need work.

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The fibre roof is OK and with care painting and a bit of work to fit original listing bars and headlining it could be made to look indistinguishable from a steel or ally one or you can get a "Pop in " Fibre lining to suit as well, depends on what you want to spend.

Your steel roof could be repaired too (They always need work as they were never properly sealed off in all the seams) Ive done a fair few.

Stuart.

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14 hours ago, Colin Symonds said:

When I recently bought my TR4A, it had the surrey top but only the soft top not the hard top.  So I did look at the fibreglass option, the opinion I got was to make sure the top has floating captive nuts.  However I was lucky in that my dealer had both an original steel and an aluminium top on the shelf, so I acquired the steel one which  has been resprayed and trimmed and was a drop on fit.  I believe he still has the ali one, but of course they do suffer from dents  so would probably need work.

I wonder how much he wants for the ally one?

Stuart.

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Hello Chris

Get your original sand blasted and then see what state it is in. Mine had some rust but I got it patched and welded up. Tricky bit is fitting a new head liner. Use the old vinyl as a pattern to make a new liner. However do not use biro pen to mark it on the reverse side or it will eventually show through. The sections can be sewn together on a sewing machine. If the original vinyl is not too bad then clean it up and respray using vinyl paint. The cost of a steel surrey top these days is eye watering so patching and welding an original would be well worth the effort in my opinion.

Keith

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30 minutes ago, keith1948 said:

Hello Chris

Get your original sand blasted and then see what state it is in. Mine had some rust but I got it patched and welded up. Tricky bit is fitting a new head liner. Use the old vinyl as a pattern to make a new liner. However do not use biro pen to mark it on the reverse side or it will eventually show through. The sections can be sewn together on a sewing machine. If the original vinyl is not too bad then clean it up and respray using vinyl paint. The cost of a steel surrey top these days is eye watering so patching and welding an original would be well worth the effort in my opinion.

Keith

I should be careful having it sandblasted, it's an unsupported largish panel and I would think easy to ripple. I would use painstripper and careful scraping finished with an orbital sander.

Mick Richards 

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We use chemical stripping services here in the 'States; they do whole car bodies and my company uses them to clean large cast iron industrial brake castings.

All paint and rust are removed in a 2-step process. I have used this method on my TR panels since 1980.

We also have dry ice blasting services which can remove paint and rust from surfaces too, and add zero waste to the process. I wouldn't expect this to get into the folds of a Surrey lid however.

From the examples I've seen TRIUMPH applied nothing to the underside of the roof panels, so the inevitable condensation drains down into the folds on all (4) sides and rusts from the inside out. The front lip seems to get the worst of it. This is not a problem on the alloy lids, but their moorings rip out over time as they try to keep the body from racking. 

Lids of both metals are terrific to have; the alloy one is half the weight and the entire kit with backlight/glass is within 7 lbs of the soft top assembly's weight.

 

Tom

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