Cool McCool's Garage

The initial plan for the roadster was to use the “patina’d” tan Haartz canvas on the top bows that came with the car.  This proved to be impossible when this morning I set to take the canvas off the (beautiful chrome) bows.  While the material was rotten, it WAS held on by what must have been thousands of staples and tacks.  These were driven into the solid wood bows, and pulling them wasn’t like pulling staples out of a convertible tops tack strip.  Oh no.  These refused to yield.  I ended up cutting the canvas with a razor, where it didn’t just tear or pull apart, removing it, and then pulling each individual staple and tack, first prying them up a bit with a small, sharp screwdriver, then yanking on them with pliers.  It took forever.

That, however, ended up being a good thing.  The old, frayed, stained top would have looked TERRIBLE against the new paint.  The top had to come off anyway to trim the back edge and curtain owing to the 2″ chop, so it would have had to have come off intact.  Which NO WAY was it going to do.  The wire on was so rusty it wouldn’t close back up and would have had to have been replaced, which also would look out of place with the old material.

So, I’ll make a new top.  No big deal.

Taking (OK, stealing) an idea from a fellow HAMB member with a lovely 34 roadster, whose top construction was outlined in detail in Street Rodder Magazine, and available on-line, I then notched the 2nd bow in the curve, to let it drop down further over the iron bow.  Taking 5/8″ out of the curve (seen above) let the bow drop almost 1 1/2″, which really improved the loft of the top.  It no longer looks like a buggy top, but like a hot rod.

I mocked up the new profile using masking tape, It looks great.  The old window opening I didn’t like, it looked to “antique-y”, this is much more pleasing to my eye.  Again, the loft is much prettier, without the center arching WAY up over the drivers head (like I’m gonna wear a fedora in this thing!), and I even like the tan color of the tape against the black paint.  So the color is “mocked up” as well.

All in all, a pretty productive day, and one more thing checked off the list!