03-06 Hard Top Measurement Request

[RAWZ08]

Afternoon all, I am working on a hard top repair of the bottom inside corner that cracked and broke off on me. Im looking for the distance between the inside edge of the lip and the back edge of the soft top tail gate bar mounts. I plan on leaving my repair a little thicker for extra support, due to me not being a professional (first time doing any sort of fiberglass/SMC repair), but I also don't want to have to do it twice if I can avoid it.

This assumes I have the repair right about where the original piece was, but I think its very close. My repair section is 1/8th of and inch thicker. My gut tells me there is plenty of room, but a sanity check would be appreciated.

I presume a measurement from a TJ would work too.

 

[Goatman]

It's fiberglass. Just sand down the edge a bit if you need to. Or just trim the soft top bracket. The brackets I have on mine are a good 1/2" or so between the hard top and the bracket edge. Don't know if they are OEM brackets or some aftermarket soft top bracket, but either way a bit of trimming is the worst it could get for you. Hope this helps

 

[RAWZ08]

That does help, thanks. Was hoping to just avoid a little hassle if I could, before I even get it back on the jeep. All things being equal, I thinking and extra 1/8" shouldn't be an issue.

 

[bedhed]

I'm coming into this late, but I can get some measurements today if you still need them. That's some nice work, man! Well done. Have you already finished the repair project?

 

[RAWZ08]

@bedhed thanks, I did finish and the extra thickness was no issue. I am satisfied with the results, sanding it down to shape was easy. Its definitely not perfect, and I left the resin part slightly raised to give it some heft, but I went over it with satin black spray paint and it looks good enough to me. I didn't try to retexture it but i roughed it up a little so it wouldnt be too smooth. If i had sanded down level, there would have been little to no resin on the outside, so i opted to just leave it. If i want to go back and try and make it look better in the future I could.

That being said, if i was going to try and make it perfect, im guessing the proper way to do it would have been to just dispose of the broken piece and add the corner back with just resin.

What decided to do at the last minute before i put the top back on was to use meguiers ultimate compound on the entire top and follow up with meguiers liquid wax. That was suggested in another thread and the results exceeded my expectations.

 

[bedhed]

Good deal. Looks great to me. Definitely looks to have more heft to it than the original. I've got plans to do some fiberglass work on mine at some point. I'm wanting to remove the vents from the rear corners, since they're unnecessary on my '06. That's going to be quite a bit of work to meet my expectations, so it will be a while before I can jump on that project. So, I take it the new resin bonded well with the old material?

 

[RAWZ08]

So far so good. I used the 3M SMC epoxy. I did expect it to be more "watery" when i was working with it, but it ended up being thicker, which made me almost have to treat it like a paste. Im sure theres a better term for my particular repair, but i tried to "dish" the edges as best I could, as mentioned in other repair threads and made the inverted pyramid with the fiberglass sheets. Needing to make such small pieces was a little difficult (the fibers start to come apart) but made it happen.