convertible top sag

[Old guy44]

I am right on the edge of parking the Indian in the front yard with the top down, filling it with planter mix and turning it into a flower pot. I put in all new top and window rubber and now I find that the top is sagging over the windows. OK it is 60 years old and my sagging started a lot younger. I cannot find any adjustment to pull it up. There is a jam screw to put downward tension on the hinge above the door window but I have backed that all the way out and  can push the top up to where it needs to be but I need upward tension on the mechanism. I only need about 3/16 inch and everything will work great. 

I considered taking the front piece out and putting it in the bench press but that seems a bit extreme.

If anyone has any suggestions I am open to anything otherwise I might have a new piece of yard art.

 

[Last Indian]

On 12/28/2022 at 1:34 PM, Old guy44 said:

I am right on the edge of parking the Indian in the front yard with the top down, filling it with planter mix and turning it into a flower pot. I put in all new top and window rubber and now I find that the top is sagging over the windows. OK it is 60 years old and my sagging started a lot younger. I cannot find any adjustment to pull it up. There is a jam screw to put downward tension on the hinge above the door window but I have backed that all the way out and  can push the top up to where it needs to be but I need upward tension on the mechanism. I only need about 3/16 inch and everything will work great. 

I considered taking the front piece out and putting it in the bench press but that seems a bit extreme.

If anyone has any suggestions I am open to anything otherwise I might have a new piece of yard art.

 

Dwight would you take pictures of both, the problem, sagging, inside shots would probably be the most helpful. As well as the mechanism? If you can make the mechanism pictures as detailed as you can. You know the articulating joint, rivets, bolts whatever might effect the sag.

[Old guy44]

Last Indian,

I "fixed" the problem sort of. I completely readjusted the window, moved the up stops so the window does not go up quite as far and adjusted the window tilt to get the rear as low as possible, I am at the limit of the slot. Then with a die grinder and a rotary file I massaged the weatherstrip. The door will now close with 0 clearance in the middle of the window. 

The thing I can't figure out is that the door glass has a hump in the upper window frame and the top rail is flat. I noticed it when I was carefully studying it. My first thought was that someone had reset the window in the frame incorrectly but both windows have the identical hump. I am positive that Pontiac engineers were smoking funny cigarettes in those years but I can't figure this one out.

The problem is only on the left so it may well be that there is wear on the pivots but everything works and I cut the road noise at freeway speeds by about 80% so call it good and go on with life. 

I threw out the old stuff so can't compare it with the new. I am not going to discount the possibility that the new rubber is a little different than the original. 

My suggestion to anyone that wants to replace the weatherstripping is take it to someone that knows it well and save yourself a lot of aggravation.  Remember me? I am the guy who stuffed an L83 and 6L80 into this thing and made all the brackets to put Wilwood disks on all corners and it took me a month to do the top and window weatherstripping.

The original weatherstripping went 60 years so if this lasts half that it will still outlast me.

 

[Old guy44]

For whatever it may be worth in the future to anyone that may follow this thread I actually found the adjustment. It is the main pivot point for the entire top mechanism. It is a pretty substantial casting that bolts to the body under the side trim piece just in front of the "S" bar behind the window. It bolts on with three 3/8 cap screws in holes about an inch square. It adjusts up and down and fore and aft. 

It is a bitchy thing to adjust because when you loosen the cap screws it moves around and is almost impossible to deal with as it is under several different forces. The weight of the top, the tension of the top fabric, the tension on all the different pieces of the top mechanism, the alignment of the stars, the phase of the moon etc. If there is a top installer out there somewhere that would like to take the time to go through the proper adjustment procedure it would help someone like us. 

There must be a proper procedure that was set up for the assembly line because the trial and error I have been going through would never work on a moving assembly line. I have had the side trim panels out at least a half dozen times. I think I have it and put it together and then find another problem Just finished adjusting the top pivots and mistakenly thinking I finally have it, I put it together and found that with the top up all the windows align but with the top down the right quarter window wants to lean in too far. So tomorrow the trim will come out again to tweak those adjustments. I also now have a small gap between the front weatherstrip and the middle as I readjusted the tension stop on the middle pivot so now need to loosen the middle and rear weatherstrip pieces and move about .080 to fix that.

Seriously If you decide to tackle this you are a braver man than I. I would unquestionably suggest having it done by someone that knows how it works because I replaced everything piece by piece and found out that everything needed to be readjusted and you adjust this and it affects that. And then that affects something else and on and on it goes.