I brought the top up and down 10 times yesterday, now I have 2 inch rips right behind the clamps in the soft top. they are straight relatively neat rips that go across the car, from left to right, 2 inches long.


Questions: Are these rips caused by something I am doing?
Is it a known problem?

Whats are my options for fixing these 2 inch rips?

Does the Hondacare warranty cover these rips?

Thanks in advance!
I did a search for rips, but all i got was " Wow this car really rips up the pavement!" type stuff hahah

JohnR

 

same thing happened to my top. no leaking occurred, and actually i was fine with it, but now that i'm trying to sell my car i ironed on some black patches just so it didn't look busted. looks fine now, and actually the wind noise at highway speeds is reduced a bit.

as long as you use black iron-on patches, and do a good job of it, you should be fine. i actually had a guy who replaces convertible tops tell me to do this as opposed to taking it in to get fixed professionally. unless you want to replace the whole top, it's the best course of action. (just be careful with that iron!)

 

Thanks, apparently this is a known problem, the latch has a sharp edge that cuts the cloth.

I read on another forum, that if you bug Honda Corporate enough, they will replace it under warranty.

 

Yes, under your warranty they will replace your top. They did it for me.

 

Actually the problem is the elastic strap on the middle support bar. If it looses stretchiness it doesn't pull the middle bar back enough.

The first sign of this is the top seems to sit a little higher than normal when folded down.

The next step is that the bar doesn't fold down far enough and it "catches" when folding down, mine had a very audible pop, and this is what rips the material.

When it caught it also destroyed my passenger side latch and it would no longer stay up when not connected. By that I mean it dangled during the whole top down process.

Here is a link to Modifry's top fix page:
http://www.modifry.com/products/ctf/index.htm

HondaCare covered mine as it is a known problem. That's good because it was $2895 at the Honda dealer.

On a side note, HondaCare went to great lengths to make sure the Honda technician told me that they wouldn't cover me if I had an engine failure because I had a CAI. They also "troll" S2ki for evidence of abuse so change your name and all personal data so your posts don't void your extended warranty.

 

this just happened to me. I took it to the dealer and I paid 97 bucks to replace the latch. I was wondering if it was due to the elastic straps. apparently the dealer didn't know this.

 

I had my top also replaced under warranty for the same worn straps. A hole had started near slightly bent middle cross-bar.

 

Just picked up my 05 suzuka blue 10-22-05... 6 days later I open the top for the first time (due to 5 straight days of rain) and rip! A nice 2 inch tear right behind the driver side latch and 1 inch along the seam. Just today, the regional manager took one look at it and authorized the replacement. I noticed that my top doesn't fold very smoothly. The front part that latches to the windshield frame jerks back instead of folding smoothly so I inquired about possibly changing the whole frame. We'll see what happens. Other than that I'm impatiently waiting for the 1000 mile mark

 

I just went through this as well. See thread:

https://www.s2ki.com/forums/index.ph...T&f=1&t=331150