I have had my new 2006 S2000 for almost an entire week, and I have a 3/4" "slit" in the top. It is about 5" to the right of the back window, about halfway up the window.

The "floppy" fabric that backs up that section of the top does not have any marks on it, so I doubt that it was a knife.

The slit is not in a place that looks like it caught on anything obvious in the process or lowering or raising the top either.

I am seeing if this is covered under warranty, as I just noticed it yesterday (it is hard to see). It does go all the way through, so I have black duct tape backing it up from underneith.

Have any of you replaced your car tops yet? If so, do you have a recommendation that will hold up better than the stock top obviously does?

The local dealer wants $1200 for the fabric, and 8 hours to put it on. I would think that I could get a stronger material for the same price, or less.

I may also go the repair route on this as well.

Thoughts?

 

Demand it to be done under warranty. $1200 is a lot of money.

No one makes softtops that are as good of a quality as OEM. If someone does, I'm sure it'll be as expensive, if not more, than OEM. Another option for you is to get a hard top.

 

Thanks for the input. I did go back to the dealer today, and they are going to cover it under warranty.

I will be getting a hard top at the end of the summer. I figured that I would not use it until then, and I can play with the money.. no sense letting that cash sit in the garage doing nothing!

 

hardtopguy sells the oem top for $800 and most convertible top places say 8 hours.

dealers are con artists. they won't even do the work...they will just send it to the same top guy and charge you on top of that.

 

ya dealers are horrible with that stuff. I had my leather fixed through them because it was under warantee and they had some guy come in. At least i didn't get charged for it but ya they don't do the work themselves. Only mechanical problems and they charge enough in labor for that anyway.

 

^that and they don't even attempt complex repairs.

they just replace entire assemblies. customer has a second gear grind...new tranny. customer hears noise from rear...new diff. In many of the cases simply repairing the bad part is much, much cheaper, but many dealers lack mechanics competent enough to do the work right.