Leon: kinda cozy in your garage, eh? Or, very efficient use of space.
And so, last year at Carlisle, I drove a really hard bargain with Carey, and talked him out of a pair of his especially wonderful billet machined top clamps. The REAL DEAL, if you ask me, not that other arrangements don't work, but these are PFA. And so I was up against starting with what was there from JPS and ending up w/ the better clamps. A couple of pictures are included. The project required filling in the cut-outs in the bow as done by JPS with JB Weld, and then pretending I was a dentist with my Dremel (?) tool to make a pocket for the latch to fit. I'm gonna say it took me about a day and Half to work through this. Seems to be good to go. Road test soon.
And, I could not have done this w/out Stroud's help. I borrowed some of his pure genius in designing a "C"-shaped clip, or whatever it might be called. David's idea here: inspirational. As this effort is a re-do on an existing top, the top itself is installed in the car, and so all work is done basically in-situ, as they say. And here, gravity is not your friend. I easily could have used three hands attached to strong arms, but failing that, I said: "Do what David did." Again, see picture attached. The bent steel clip (with a bit of Gorilla tape applied to save scratching) worked like a champ as the third hand. Kept everything in place while I fit, and marked and cussed and consternated about how the ever-lovin' f&*$ was this gonna work??! Seems like it did.
Second project: Courtesy lights. I have always wished for some sort of light at night when getting into the car, or maybe needing to look at a map, or find my beer, or whatever. If there is a right-seater to deal with, it is nice if the car lights up when the door is opened. So I set about to do that. A combo of wall mounted down lights on either side, and some LEDs up under the dash, and a rocker switch, and it is done. This particular job has taken about two years from first concept. That would be 730 days, where the last four or five have seen the parts all come together. I did do some basic laying out in November before the Holidays, and vacation south of the equator took precedence. It is not a lot of light, but it beats nothing. And the LEDs although small, are nevertheless pretty bright; enough too see a map (or find your church-key) if you need to.
Job Three: Install the cool little spring loaded engine lid latch. That turned out to be pretty straight forward, and works like a charm. Nowhere near as TFA as Stroud's license plate do-hickey and air cylinder, but good enough for me.
Carlisle, here I come. engine fired up promptly, and seems to be running smooth, and so we scooted around a bit a few days ago when weather was nice.
I thought I had done something wrong when installing the top....whew!