ok, so yesterday i was up around six am and it started raining, rain means slippery conditions ideal for idiots such as myself to go play in parking lots, so thats what i did. however i noticed ALOT of water leaking in from my t-tops, as this was the first rainy day we have had since i got the car i never knew it had a leaking problem.

so it is now 4:35 am here. i was just woke again by the rain, i went amediatly running out to my car with four plastic trash bags and two heavy blankets. i put the trash bags over the slightly damp car, where they stuck quite well. covered entire top ssection of car, and then i threw on the blankets, by this time the rain had been upgradded to downpour status, i was soaked, car was soaked, blankets+bags wer soaked, tops were dry! of course, now it's four am and i am up after onlyt four hours of sleep. but at least my backseat is dry.

it would suck if it was wet becouse i have a road trip to do today, going to LA to visit family from portland. long way, two legs, we are staying over in sscramento. ANYWAY...

the leaking was not so much a pour as a steady drip.(yesterday, no leaking today) i am asuming new weaatherstripping will fix this, just wanted to let everyone know that they are not alone.... and all this time i assumed my car was the ONE that did not leak... what was i thinking..

 

t-tops = leaks, no questions about it.

 

T-tops suck. THey really do. Unless they are brand new.

Buy some rubber pants or new T-tops.

Matt

 

1. Keep the seals lubricated. I don't know what's best to use, but the tops will always leak worst after a long dry period.

2. "Redo" the seals yourself. Get some black silicone sealant for cars. Apply a small bead all the way around the seals. Lay plastic food wrap on this bead very carefully, with no folds or anything. Put t-tops back on. Wait for silicone to dry. After it has dried, remove the plastic wrap and you'll have a good seal that follows the contours of the glass nicely and should provide a good seal.

3. Buy new seals.

 

What usually happens is a small amount of water unavoidibly gets under that foam seal and begins rusting.
You can out all the sealant in the world on top of the sealing foam, but they will still leak.

I would say, remove the foam, sand the area down. paint/prime the area. Put on new foam seals, then lay a heavy silcon bead at the base of it... then you smear it out with a finger.

Thats what I had to do with an 88 T top I used to have. Fixed it nicely.

 

My vert's not bad unless I open the door. When I close it, it takes a second or 2 for the seal to set, and it has a drip that just falls right on the side support of the seat.

 

I've been talking to Dirk about getting a specific TTop/Vert board for issues such as this one and others.


What do you all think? Good Idea/Bad Idea? I don't want to bug him again if no one's interested.

I know there's a LOT of vert specific questions out there, but TTop guys have some too.

 

The new board sounds like a real good idea. But as for me, I have t-tops, and both were leaking for a while. I went out and bought a set from the local thirdgen junkyard, and switched out my latch assembly on the passenger side with that from the "new"set, and put that top in the place of the old one, so on that side I have not quite original glass but the original locking mechanism. On the driver's side, since I originally had tinting on both tops (but had to remove it from the pass side becuase of a large scratch), I was trying to make the top so that I could keep the glass. When I disassembled the driver's t-top, I found that my weatherstripping was torn and in shambles, and when I removed it, it tore into three large pieces. I took the weatherstripping I had from the junk set and put it in the top, but it still leaked. Then, I discovered why. For some reason, the seal on that top was too far back from the front of the top, where it should be, and too far away from the back to make a good seal. So I left the top in the car, took off the locking handle, the outer plastic cover, and loosened the screws on the weatherstripping tabs just enough so that they could move. I pulled the front of the strip foreward to be in tight contact with the seal on the lip of the roof and tightened the screw on that end. Then I went to the rear of the strip and did the same thing, excpt I had to stretch the rubber to make contact with the roof rail stripping. It sounds complex in reading it, but once you start doing it, it's simple.

 

i drove my new car home yesterday, 980 miles, and it rained for about 600 of those. some of it was the worst rain i've ever driven in, and thankfully my tops didnt leak. the car has low mileage, and the tops were rarely taken off, so i guess they stayed preserved pretty well.

yeah the ttop/vert idea sounds good, probably get alot of hits, you should ask Dirk about it

 

had a friend a while back w/ an immaculate T/A...the car was very very very low miles , flawless body, etc...beautiful, neway i can remember as we'd take the t's off the car, you would still hear a suction sound as the top seperated from the rubber seals, was awesome to hear, and they didn't leak. Then he let a friend of his drive the car one day, a tractor trailer cut him off, his friend slammed on the brakes but the car did the braking pull to the left i think. Friend didn't compensate and ran the car into the guardrail at highway speed, was the end of that T/A. His lil' sister however took a lot of pieces off the car, minus engine and tranny (don't know why, it was tuned port) and started putting things on her 83-84 Z28 with the Crossfire 305....cool family i guess , LOL.

 

just got back from roadtrip. did not rain thank ***.... anyway, thanks for all the segustions, i will definatly adjust the seal on the tops and may get new weatherstriping for the t-top area as well.