Pretty much the only time I part with something I've built is either when I turn it over to a company that plans to put it in production, or if I've built something for a friend's Jeep. If I decide to anything different with the JK Soft Barn Door I'll let you know.

 

Ok, I'll keep my fingers crossed. The one thing I really would like is to have a soft rear window on my hardtop I love the open airflow on the highway

 

A little more info on the soft barn door design... I made the LJ soft barn door with a fixed vinyl window, but for the JK version I plan to make the window open - it'll zip just like the factory half door uppers. The unzipped window can either just hang down inside like the windows on the factory half door uppers, or it can be rolled and held with snap straps.



The Soft Barn Door will be compatible with both the JK Safari Cab and the factory hardtop. For the factory hardtop, the glass liftgate would be removed when this is installed. In addition to the openable window, the entire soft barn door upper will be easily and quickly removable, like half door uppers.

 

Perfect Summer Option. This will be affordable as well.

 

One of the details I had to do before I could declare the JK Safari Cab roof panel done and ready to begin the paint process is finish up the drip rails. The drip rail, which includes the inside bolt flange for attaching the roof to the sides, is a separate part the gets bonded to the bottom of the roof panel. I had bonded everything together before the test last fitting of the top but I hadn't finished off the drip rail. The top of the drip rail still needed to be trimmed and the inside of the drip rail needed to be sealed. Sealing the drip rail involves filling it half-full with liquid epoxy, which completely seals it and provides a nice uniform inside surface. The epoxy I used is a very thin liquid and flows very well, so the roof panel has to be absolutely level before the epoxy cures. I set the roof on one of my trailers and used the tongue jack to level it. I tinted the epoxy white so it looks just like the fiberglass gel coat, although it doesn't matter because everything will be painted anyway.

 

I've been thinking I'd paint the hardtop in a two-color scheme, body color on the sides and a black roof (I'd wanted to do a white roof, but Heather's against that). Something like this:



Over the past week I've seen several JKs the same color as ours but with a color matched hardtop, and I really didn't like the look, so now I'm thinking maybe I should do a single color. I've tried to do some simulations of the factory Dark Khaki hardtop color (color code ZJ8). Some photos of that color I've found:



These two seem to be the same color as my JK:



I've "painted" the hardtop with colors from two of the photos above:





And this one is painted with a color sample I found on Paintscratch.com...



Hard to tell what it would really look like :(.

 

Another look at the factory Dark Khaki color.

 

Painting the top panel of the roof White would mean less heat absorption ; since it's the top panel alone, couldn't see it unless Really Tall. Something for Everyone ?
That Khaki is nice.

 

At 6'6", I probably qualify as "Really Tall" . Besides, Heather doesn't want white.

I've had my all-black LJ Safari Cab out in the sun and heat many times (photo below is Utah) and never felt uncomfortable - it's got a headliner and that probably helps. I plan a headliner in the JK Safari Cab as well.

I do like the khaki, but I'm going to do a few other images with single colors to see what they look like, stay tuned.

 

This one's called Desert Tan. I've inserted the paint supplier's color sample in the upper left of the image for comparison to my colorization job: