Canvas top ciover

Even the factory documentation called the Speedster top - an emergency top.  Although Max Hoffman targeted it for Calif - I guess it does rain occasionally there.  Some side curtains are supplied with a canvas frame which greatly reduces the lucite viewing area - making interior rather claustrophobic.  You can make side curtains without that frame - completely from lucite (mylar).  That gives a greater viewing surface.  Rain-X makes a product to make water bead up and run off - they also make an interior anti-fog (but for glass only).  Be sure to get the one for plastic.

Michael Balastrieri posted:

I have a convertible, but when I put the top up when it rains it’s impossible to see comfortably anything outside your windows (the izen glass), especially.  Useless IMO.  Anyone else experience this?  Very dangerous lack Of vision.  Any suggestions?

IM guys have glass windows that roll up and down. Some guys have built their own side-curtains with thick Plexiglas. Most others just park their car when it might rain.

And still others have heat and defrost that actually work. They are in the extreme minority though.

Yeah, the Intermeccanica and SAS cars have tops and roll-up side windows that do an excellent job of sealing out the rain.  Most of the rest of our cars pretty much leak like a sieve from the top and along the body seal, with a few exceptions.  Jack Crosby and I have done a good job of tweaking things here and there to seal them up and documenting what we've done for others to follow.  You can use the search function (spyglass up at the top of this page) and search for convertible top posts by either of us (look back before 2015).  Much info is up in the "knowledge" section, but you'll need to become a donating member to see it and I don't know if you're yet ready for that.

Bear in mind that many of our cars have a fabric border around the side window plexiglass (see Wolfgang's post above) and that border reduces viewable area by 30% and can seriously impede seeing the side mirrors if they are mounted on the forward part of the door.  For that reason, I deleted the fabric border on my car and just run the plexiglass naked and placed the outside mirrors out on the fenders to see them through the windshield - If you design the side window sizes right they can effectively stop rain intrusion AND give a much larger viewing area, like this:

Also, once rain hits the side windows it tends to bead on the acrylic until you get over 30mph (Rain-X helps this a lot).  And lastly, as Danny posted, the heat and "defrosters" (I use that term laughingly) on all but a handful of cars may take longer to heat and defog the car than your entire trip takes unless you have a water-cooled engine or a gasoline fueled heater to provide much better heat.

Bottom line:  Don't bother to drive your Speedster in the rain unless it's an emergency and then plan on drying out your carpets for a couple of days.

" Margard " is the best Lexan I have used for full view  :~)  ….side curtains are scratch resistant and doesn't crack, for the fun of it take a small scrap piece of Lexan and beat it with a hammer.

Dang, Michael, just when I'd convinced myself once again that my Speedster IS SO a real car, you have to go and bring up that whole rain thing.

The thing is, modern cars are absolutely no problem in the rain because of a whole lot of pretty good engineering that took years to work out and that we now take mostly for granted.

Doors and windows that seal perfectly no matter what. Windshield wipers that always work - slow, medium, fast, intermittent, rain-sensing, speed-sensing. I think Mercedes now has windshield wipers that give you the latest stock quotes.

But the big, often-overlooked, bit of anti-rain engineering is the ventilation systems all modern cars have. Modern defrosters even turn on the air-conditioning to dehumidify without your even noticing.

So, even if you manage to seal a Speedster up tight as a drum (and you won't manage to), you still won't see diddly through your windows after about two minutes. Not because of the rain outside, but the condensation inside.

Gordon has made some nice windows there, but what he hasn't explained is that he also designed and built a forced-air, heated ventilation system that was modeled after the system they used to heat the Astrodome. It's the only car with an infrared profile that can be picked up by weather satellites.

Face it, you've got a Speedster. One of its charms is that it reminds us of what driving was like in the early twentieth century.

Be careful out there.

Gas heater, two words that will remove that condensation.