Date: Sat, 28 May 2011 12:06:00 -0800
Reply-To: Troy <colorworks@GCI.NET>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: Troy <colorworks@GCI.NET>
Subject: Re: Pop top issue
Content-type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset=iso-8859-1; reply-type=response
Thank you for the detailed response Alistair! I did manage to move the
tougue part of the latch, and that helped a little. I would suggest to
anyone trying to loosen these large Phillips bolts to use a number 2 or 3
Phillips head inside of a quarter inch socket, and then hook that up to a
3/8 drive. Makes loosening those very stubborn bolts possible. I could not
budge them otherwise. I'm not sure how much torque is on them, but it
seemed quite a bit. The socket and ratchet makes it a whole lot easier.
I will have to take a closer look at the top latch. The holes in my
fiberglass roof are stripped, so removing those bolts is a challenge to say
the least. I have to partially loosen the nuts, then either climb up on the
luggage rack or get a ladder and put a vice grip on the head of the carriage
bolt to keep it from spinning-- not much fun. I'm really not certain that
the vertical alignment is the issue anyway.
Last year, when I replaced one of the hinges, I did play around with the
fore and aft positioning of the hinges, and like you, do not make a lot of
progress. I didn't think about disconnecting my pop top struts, but I
actually just loosened the bolts a tiny bit, and then use a hammer (gently
tapping) the hinges for and aft with a reference piece of masking tape on
the roof.
As I recall it's a real bugger to adjust these. The gap up at the luggage
roof increases, and that got me to wondering if the luggage rack is not
somehow misaligned too. I'm sure all of the stuff was removed at some point
on my van for painting, and who knows if they got it back in the right spot.
.
I was not aware of the one elongated hole in the rear. I'll have to study
that some more.
Just moving the tongue part of the large upfront has helped a bit. I have
also removed my Tom buese shelf, as I think this is causing the pop top
struts to tweak a bit in the wrong direction.
If anyone is interested in a shelf, give me a shout. I think I'm going to
leave it off. I never much use it anyway.
Thanks again for the response, and I'll let you know how it goes with
further adjustment. For now, I'm taking the boat on the water! Will put
this off for another time.
Enjoy!
Troy
> Hi,
>
> I've been dealing with a friend's pop top issue and while its not quite
> the same problem you have maybe this will help.
>
> 1. the latch is adjustable. The handle part on the roof is adjustable for
> vertical latch engagement via a couple of bolts. The design has changed
> slightly over the years but you can see the adjustment bolts in the
> shallow "u" in this pic of a latch from an '82 westy
> http://shufti.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/img_3229.jpg
> The amount of vertical adjustment is limited.
> The fixed part of latch on the metal roof is adjustable fore and aft,
> those 4 big phillips head screws sit in elongated holes. Here is a pic of
> the that part, showing the backing plate hidden above headliner
> http://shufti.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/img_3232.jpg
>
> 2. about the top sitting high on one side... this is happening to my
> friend's '91 westy. Its like a hat sitting not quite straight on a head.
> So one side hits the tapered part of the roof before the other side. You
> know that there seems to be no real lateral adjustment at the hinges, but
> there is fore and aft adjustment. So you can push one side forward and
> the other aft a little, which ends up "cocking" the roof. BTW, we found
> removing the pop top gas struts makes this adjustment much easier. This
> might be enough to get things right, but it did not work in our case. We
> found that while we can get the latch to engage properly, we still could
> lift one forward edge of the pop top much easier than the other side
> indicating it was not down firm enough on that side. Back at the rear,
> you can see the mis alignment b how the rear "bulges" of the roof sit on
> either side of the hatch.
> We considered that the hinges had been bent slightly. They didn't appear
> to be, but it is still a possibility. Time was running short so we didn't
> explore "tweaking" the hinges with a pry bar.
> We were using where the rear of the pop top ("bulges") sit on the metal,
> the forward seal on the luggage rack, and the vertical distance to gutter
> on the sides as "metrics". We'd adjust the latch to suit our roof
> adjustments.
>
> 3. on the pop top roof, at the hinges, the manual shows that one of the
> holes in the fibreglass is elongated. I think its the upper rear one. We
> did not notice that until later, but I wonder if that allows further
> tweaking on how the roof sits. I don't see how it does as the other holes
> on the roof are not elongated, but hey, its worth a try. Those painted
> screws can be hard to loosen, you really do need to use a good fitting
> large screwdriver.
>
> I hope some of this helps, and I hope if you get the alignment fixed you
> tell me what you did :) Buggering around with the roof is a bit of a
> chore, it is easier with 2 people.
>
>
> alistair
>
>
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