Does anybody make a powered top conversion?

If I were to try it, can anyone recommend some parts (motors mainly)?

 

Look at the same generation of Corvette convertible. I was told by a customer that he saw where someone had modified the parts from a Corvette power convertible top to work on their F-Body convertible.

Lon

 

That's a great idea. I will do that.

 

how about out of a 4th gen camaro/firebird? would that work?

 

concidering you have to help the top fold right manually i don't see how this will work.

 

yea, after doing a little more thinking, it would be more work than payoff.
seeing how you would have to get
the tonneou to lift
then the top come out
then make the bottom of the top lift up
tonneou down
bottom of top down

 

I think the things to overcome are these:
1) The obvious retraction of the top, I am not sure how different a 4th gen is from a 3rd gen, but it is obviously different.
2) The tonneau would be probably the trickiest part to incorporate. You have to release the top, fold the top upwards release the tonneau and then fold the top down. then lower the tonneau...

Somehow to have all this mechanically done with motors would be quite the engineering nightmare... If the top did not rest on the tonneau, I could see that being advantageous, but then again you would lose the look of the convertible as it was designed. You might redesign it so the top was more like a 4th gen, that did not have the Tonneau... That would probably be the easiest path, but that in itself would pose problems as you would need to make a replacement area for where the tonneau is now.

 

If you want inspiration for doing this take a look at the first generation Volvo C70 convertible with a soft top. It has a tonneau and the entire process of lowering or raising the top is very similar to how our manual operated top functions. The difference is that theirs is all done automatically.

Lon