Going : soft to hard

Bought a rear hardtop for my XJ-SC – blue, good condition (thanks, Brian). Then I made the big mistake of deciding to fit it. It soon became obvious that the rear soft-top had not been removed in decades…possibly ever. The Handbook is not the clearest of guides.

I managed to remove 10 of the 11 Allen head bolts securing the rear ‘skirt’ to the car….but of course the 11th one resisted. And resisted. The Allen ‘hole’ rounded off. I used a 3mm drill bit to drill deep enough for a stud extractor. It would not grip it. I used a 6mm drill bit to remove the head off the Allen bolt. At which point I could finally remove the soft-top…after removing how many bolts in total – 20+ ?! What a palaver…..is there a car whose soft-top removal is more labour intensive ?!

Fitting the hardtop was relatively straightforward but once again the handbook could have been more helpful – a picture would have helped — I was thinking the over-centre catches each side on the hardtop must fit into the same brackets that the soft-top uses….no, the brackets need to be removed, then under the lining fabric is a third, lower, hole to bolt the over-centre catches to…in my case there was no hole in the lining fabric, which suggests that a hardtop has never been fitted to the car before.

Once again it is over-complicated and not ideal to have to carry a screwdriver with you and contort yourself into the back seats to undo 2 bolts before the hardtop can be removed.

Several questions remain:

1/ what the heck am I going to do with the still stuck 11th stud ? Drill it out and cut a new thread, I suppose. What is the thread type on all the stainless bolts involved ?

2/ As suggested in the Handbook, I had to use a couple of the soft-top bolts to attach the hard-top because I have no bolts in my ‘stock’ which match that thread – does anyone know the exact thread ?

3/ Which way around should the ‘spade connectors’ on the over-centre catches go – niether way around seems ideal.

4/ Were all cars fitted with wiring for a heated rear window (which my new hardtop has)….I have the combined ‘heated rear screen and heated door mirrors switch’ on the dashboard ? Where is the cable ?

After all the above tribulation, the hardtop fitted does look good….despite it being blue and the rest of the roof being black. See my blue-to-black roof post elsewhere here for that saga.