Well, I finished the vert top replacement. I used an AAbest top purchased from Ebay. At the same time, I recovered my seats with Leatherseats.com seat covers, and UPGRADED the headrest speakers. I took my time, everything worked out pretty well.


The vert top replacement thread over at torquecentral was intially helpful, but was quite incomplete, leaving to my own ability. The FSM assumes that you are replacing the top that you just removed or replacing the top with a factory top, prepunched and precut. Nothing is addressed in either place about how to align the top properly and how to finish the details.

The AAbest top has a seam in the middle of the bottom welt where the top bolts onto the body. There are two other seams that run along the corner of the top down to the attatchment welt at each corner, right and left. There is also a bolt hole in the middle of the body. Piece of cake! I poked a hole for the middle bolt right on the middle seam, then worked my way both directions, one bolt at a time. Easy, right? Then later when I was attatching the front of the top to the bow, I couldn't get the top even. I had a wrinkle on the drivers side that didn't make sense. I couldn't get the wrinkle out. I had already decided that I was not going to stretch the top too tight. So I slept on the problem. The next day, I got out my tape measure and began figuring out why I had an unexplained wrinkle. It turns out that the middle seam in the back is 7/8" closer to the drivers side corner seam than to the passenger side. The whole top was installed crooked and the holes were already punched! ARGGGG!!! I did as much adjusting as I could up top, but could not completely compensate for the mistake.

Another barrier is that the FSM gives Mazda part numbers for the adhesives required. Torquecentral mentions only one adhesive and for that one they just give the brand name, 3M. Well, 3M makes lots of different adhesives; picking the right adhesives for the right portion of the job turns out to be important.

I used 3M Super Weatherstrip Adhesive-Black part number 08008 to stick the vert top to the inside of the rim of the back window. This was between the rim and the top fabric applied before stapling the material to the rim. I also used it to stick the headliner to the inside of the rim of the back window after the top material was stapled and before the window was roped in. This adhesive was also quite nice to stick on the driver door trim strip which had become loose. One benefit of using the Super over the Heavy-duty is that the Super is Black; The Heavy duty is yellow. Since my vert is black, any yellow adhesive that peeked out would be bright and ugly, any black doesn't even show. Any mistakes on the top match my black top also.

I used 3M Automotive Bedding and Glazing Compound, Part#08509 for bedding in the back window. It is applied in a fairly heavy layer to the back rim ontop of the headliner and stapled top material. It is then allowed to skin over before you rope in the back window. This stuff will set in a flexible, soft texture and theoretically never harden.

I used RTV Black Silicone for sealing the drain hose to the drain pockets on each side of the top (thanks Icemark).

I used Permatex Flowable Silicone Window and Glass Sealer in the weatherstrip groove for the back glass. This type of silicone is thin enough to flow into leak around the windshield and it worked great in the back window weatherstrip groove. I don't know what was used in this groove before, but it was green, hard and broke out of the groove in little chunks.

I was a little intimidated by roping in the back window. I had 2 friend that claimed to have expertise in the matter. When it came down to the nut-cutting, neither one had really done it before. Both when asked to help claimed to have seen it done but couldn't really remember how it was done. I have a Porche buddy who was game to help. I found this really good tutoral on a JeeP site:

http://www.jeepbrokers.com/jeep_proj...eplacement.htm

We had no trouble roping the window in. It took probably 5 minutes total. I used 3/16 polypropylene rope. I soaped it up, but the soap and water mixture wouldn't stick to the poly rope. On the otherhand, the poly rope was pretty slick all by itself, so I don't think it was much of a problem.

Hardest part of the job? I spent 3 hours cleaning the old glazing compound off the rubber watherstrip for the back window. The material was soft and compliant, but tenatious as hell. You have to get this stuff off so the new bedding compound has room to form the new seal. If I ever do another top, I will first check on the price of a new seal. Would have been worth $100 to me by the time it was finished.