Well I figured with the purchase of my dumpy hardtop, it was time for a build thread. It won't be a faced paced thread because my money has a lot of priories at the moment, but we started a major project this weekend, so it's time!

Bought a hard top!
Finally picked up a hardtop. It was a dumpy blue one I got on the cheap from a local legend. Needed a ton of work, but I'm up to the challenge..... I think.... probably not.





The color was "Nappa Blue" and it looked like total ****. No ***** were given when this car was sprayed, and it showed. All the seals were over sprayed and effectively ruined, even the clasps on the inside of the car somehow got paint on them.

Temporary fix....
Got a few too many "Gay Captain America" jokes on day one, so insecure me took a can of rustolium to the car, and made it black for a week or so. Looked OK..










We sanded that bitch till our eyes bled. All the way through the dirty blue, and the white below it.



Fortunately I have access to a very nice place to work.









Bondo Bondo everywhere.

Starting to come together.



Put a small hole in the top of the crack.... fill that bitch with fiberglass, and resin the **** out of it.



Hopefully that will all sand away sometime this century....





A **** ton more block sanding is needed, more work on the low spots is needed, and the fiberglass needs attention for sure. More work for next weekend.....

 

Fiberglass repair as it turns out, isn't really too bad.







Primer + tac coat




Black, + Clear


Done!

 

Nice work, the end result looks like it was worth it. I had a few chunks missing from my hardtop and went through this same ordeal and its holding up great so far. You mentioned you used Bondo, was it just regular old Bondo? I ask because when I researched, it seemed like the SMC material the hardtop is made of is really picky and some fillers don't stick well to it.

 

I did use regular old bondo. I've heard the same thing, but we had absolutely 0 trouble with the bondo sticking to the material. We had a paint bubble, but I'm thinking that was from getting a little too feisty when we went from wet sanding to paint. When we put the top in the sun, we immediately saw a little bubble pop up, maybe half the size of a dime, right in the center of the top. Because this was all done on the cheap, and the primer itself doesn't appear to be compromised, I'm thinking a red vinyl stripe down the center will be the fix.

 

I should mention that the total cost for this project was under $700.