Hi there! Why not register as a user to enjoy all of the benefits of the site? You may register here. When you register, please pick a username that is non-commercial. If you use a name that appears on any search engine commercially, you must pick another name, whether it applies to you or not. Commercial usernames are for supporting vendor use only. If you want to become a supporting vendor and grow your business, please follow this link. Thanks!
I apologize if I'm posting this is the wrong place, but after 30 pages of interior/exterior and 22 pages of repairs, I figured this is as good a place as any.
Does anyone have experience or knowledge as far as what works for repairing knife damage to a soft top? Someone last night got the great idea to slash my top while it was in the parking lot.
It is the touring edition with the insulation, but I don't really care about the insulation. The main purpose of the soft top is to keep me dry and I rarely use it anyway.
Any help or points in the right direction would be greatly appreciated.
Replace. Like a tent, canvas, or sail it can be patched and stitched. But it will look patched and stitched. If that's not what you want, you have to replace it.
Thanks for the quick reply. Replacing really isn't an option right now. I don't have $1400 or so the dealer is asking for a new one. I've looked on ebay, ebayuk as well as this site for one but I haven't found anything at all.
If you are not concerned about a perfect repair, I would glue a patch on the inside, under the insulation, bringing the cut edges together, it might not look too bad either.
Cheers,
Michael
I would bring to an apholstery shop and see what they can do for you. They should have some reasonably priced options available. Look out for used ones posted here as well...
In my former life, I was a sailmaker (before discovering that i'm actually interested in a decent wage bracket).
Should not be much of a challenge for a descent canvasworker to turn out a new soft-top, if you are not interested in the insulation. There is no shape to the piece, other than induced shape, and the edge trims (wire passes) are similarly pretty basic.
I would expect that you will have to go through a couple fitting iterations. The lateral sizing of the piece will be the hardest part, I expect. The fabric, edging, and wire passes all have different stretch characteristics which will take a bit of adjustment to sync up.
Frankly, I would avoid taking it to a sailmaker (or a clothesmaker, for that matter) unless they also do a good volume of canvas work. They are each pretty specific skillsets.
Thanks all for the suggestions. I was hoping someone had gone through a similar situation. Someone decided to slash the soft top, didn't steal anything, didn't hurt anything else, just the top.
And it figures, the one night it's not in the garage.
Thanks again for all the wonderful suggestions. I'm going to possibly pursue a few different routes and I'll let everyone know how it turns out.
Damn I hate seeing crap like this and the people who do it. Where did this happen? Do you still have your hard top to put on? If not, I am not using my soft top, and you may borrow mine until you get yours sorted out.
Some many years ago my friends and I bought a GP medium, as in Tent, General Purpose, Medium,,,.....The US Army's definition of 'medium' is `16'x32' as in the tents from MASH, in fact it was Korean war vintage. WE bought some canvas and some adhesive that was probably similar to GE 5200 and patched it up. The patches didn't leak. It served as a garage for my +2 for one winter, and as a weekend camping party tent many times
patch from the inside, one tear at a time, put glue on the face of the patch and lay the top over it. weight it down overnight with some books or somesuch so it stay flat. If you are careful you will see the line of the cut and a flat spot the size of the patch but you will not see buckling like stitching would and it won't leak
A suggestion - do a good patch with watertightness being the main concern over aesthetics. (You'd never be able to hide it anyway.) Then cover the repair with a racing stripe in a contrasting color of fabric.
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Related Threads
?
?
?
?
?
The Lotus Cars Community
2.7M posts
51.5K members
Since 2002
A forum community dedicated to all Lotus owners and enthusiasts. Come join the discussion about performance, modifications, troubleshooting, maintenance, and more!