Subscribed..........

Thanks for the write up..........
Just waiting to find the time to build mine so i can get Mr. Softy top on!

 

Thank you for the write up. I built my hoist last weekend and it came out Ok. lol Its up and holding the top so I am happy with that.

 

Sold the 08 for a 10 without the hardtop. I'm amazed at the quality of the 10's softop. At 1st I thought, "great, now I have to find a hardtop". Now I'm glad I don't have to monkey with the taking it off and on. Plus when your away from the garage what do ya do.... Anyway, the softtops have come a long way. It is funny I bought the 08 because of the new hardtop, but now...

Of course I'm in South Texas so YMMV....

Great write up. Now what do I do w/ mine?

 

Looks like you ship it to the next guy who finds this thread and wants to do this.

As an aside, I also would have never bothered with the hard top, except my wife and I had a kid on the way so I modified the 2 door to be a "3 door." Much easier with the hard top as the glass swings up.

https://www.jk-forum.com/forums/show...eplacing-bench)

Now I have a hard top and a TrekTop. Works great, at least for me.

 

Is the shelf necessary? While nice to store the other two pieces of the freedomtop, I'd like to not build the shelf at the momemt. Any harm in leaving the top on the J-hooks for the summer.

 

In theory, the hard top could warp a bit without even distribution of the weight. But don't know if anyone has actually had this as an issue.

 

This has been asked many times over the years since I posted this as some see the shelf as overkill. In some ways it's a piece of mind thing to have the weight of the top on the shelf and distributed from a few points on the ceiling while in storage. Is it necessary? Probably not as the hoist/bar are plenty strong but I also don't worry about it either while it's stored. I wouldn't feel as comfortable having the top hanging from the T-bar all summer/fall but it's probably strong enough and just a matter of personal preference whether or not you need the shelf or not.

 

Instead of building a whole shelf you could just use a 2x4 to get the weight on something other than the hooks. I got the idea from wayoflife in a post where he used ratchet straps to hoist the top...

 

I guess I cheated and bought a used Lange Power Top Hoist off of C/L.
I know a lot of people don't like the Lange Hoist, but I bought the power model and 4 nice ratchet straps for $200! I don't think that was a bad deal considering what it would cost to buy the parts and my time to gather and engineer/build the components of a homebuilt hoist. Right now I have "0" extra time for this type of thing and this was the only way I was going to be able to get my top off with my limited time I have. I can see that the Lange may not be as strong as most of the homebuilts out there, but I think it is plenty good for my use. I will only be using this twice a year. Once to take it off in the Spring and once to put it back on in the Fall. The rest of the time it will hang in the garage. I used the hoist to lift the top and then use the 4 straps hung from the ceiling to carry most of the weight of the top while hanging, with the hoist "T" bar just snug against the top. One thing that I will change is the lift ratio of the hoist. It is 1 to 1 now (single pull) and that is a little fast. This Fall after I put the top back on I will rerig the ceiling hooks and go to a 1 to 2 ratio to slow down the speed by 1/2. Other than the speed I like the setup I have for the money I spent.

Now what to do with the bulky pesky Freedom tops????????:dontkn ow2:

AH HA!
I KNOW! I'll store them where we all have wasted space.... Above the garage door!

Yeah, what I did was bought 6 ladder type screw in hooks and put them in the ceiling above my garage door. They are easy to get to and completly out of the way.
I had thought about building a shelf to support the top on while hanging and to store the tops like many of the members have done (and it is a great idea) but again with my limited time (and I like the open space under the top) I needed to come up with something else. So as I was looking upward for guidence and help... there it was! A big blank area of wasted unused realestate right over my head.
So anyway the hook idea works for me and was cheap, quick and easy.
Heres a couple photos of my Freedom tops in storage. ENJOY, AND FEEL FREE TO COPY.

 

I don't have my rig yet, but I'm going to start building one of these. Two questions:

1) What's the height of the glass (how far back does it go when in the up position)?
2) Does anyone know the dimensions of the 2 door freedom top with the panels removed? length at longest point since it's not a straight side towards front.

Thanks. And great job by so many people on building innovative lifts, shelves, etc.