Wife says she wants a hard top on my LJ to go camping (ie. overlanding), The only one I have seen that I really like is this pretty pricey one at Gr8Tops...... so, would you or wouldn't you?
Would you buy this top?
- Thread starter FireJeep
- Start date
Wife says she wants a hard top on my LJ to go camping (ie. overlanding), The only one I have seen that I really like is this pretty pricey one at Gr8Tops...... so, would you or wouldn't you?
F Troop
TJ Enthusiast
Kaptainkid1
TJ Enthusiast
The Safari Cab was designed with overlanding/camping in mind and while Gr8Tops made a few changes to the design and eliminated a few features when they put it production, I think their version is still a great candidate for those uses. If there's anything you want to know about it I should be able to answer any questions you might have. This is mine:
@skrelnik 's top looks like the price and quality don't match up.
https://wranglertjforum.com/threads/looking-for-a-aftermarket-hardtop.30982/post-499768
https://wranglertjforum.com/threads/looking-for-a-aftermarket-hardtop.30982/post-499768
Jeff Scherb's top is awesome and much better than my Gr8tops hard top. Jeff designed the Gr8tops hard top, but that company does the build. Jeff is a genius with this stuff.
My experience with Gr8tops was not so good. While the top is awesome, and I love the design in so many ways, the build quality is not very good so I could not recommend buying the top without disclosing the sloppyness of the Gr8tops.
This is the top, and there is a black gel coat on there which looks like this after two years. My body shop looked at it and said the gel coat is like a primer and it should have been painted. Now it has faded to match my fender flares
The top also came with patched holes everywhere, and they patched up the holes with elmer's glue or something cheap like that so it leaked all over the inside of the Jeep. Look at this crap they sent me:
So they sent a replacement hard top that some idiot over drilled multiple times so the exterior and interior both have multiple spider cracks.
So it will end up costing me another grand just fix and repaint it, so it might be better to ask @jscherb if his design is for sale, if you can find your own fabricator. Maybe get it done in aluminum instead of fiberglass.
Gr8Tops doesn't do the manufacturing in-house, they contract it out. They've had several different fiberglass shops do the production over the years, maybe yours was made by one of the shops they got rid of.
I've had nothing to do with their manufacturing except for a short period in the beginning when I was advising them on the details of getting it into production.
I don't have a Gr8Tops top but the ones I've seen have looked pretty good and I do have a Gr8Tops roof panel on mine and the quality of that panel is very good. They sent me a roof to swap onto my top a few years ago to test and to demonstrate how to add features they eliminated, like tying a roof rack to the roll bars through the roof to support heavier weights on the rack. Mine also has a lot of miles running without the hard sides, with the roll-up soft sides in place (not a Gr8Tops option) and that's held up great too.
Fiberglass is more than sufficient for these tops. Mine homemade top has been on my LJ for almost 10 years now, over 120,000 road and trail miles and lots of weight on the roof rack on the trail. It's still going strong, no problems.
On the trail with the hard sides off and a spare and the half doors on the roof...
Scout425
Member
Bull Dawg now makes a hardtop if you havent looked at that option.
https://wranglertjforum.com/threads/bull-dawg-lj-hardtop-initial-impressions.39354/#post-655869
https://wranglertjforum.com/threads/bull-dawg-lj-hardtop-initial-impressions.39354/#post-655869
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