A customer entrusted us with the restoration of their rare OEM clear carbon fiber hardtop after the unthinkable happened to it. While in the frenzy of moving residences, the owner placed the hardtop on his car to keep it out of the way. When he drove the car the next day, it was business as usual… until he got to a highway onramp and accelerated. The car made it onto the highway. The hardtop (not bolted down) went a different direction. Fortunately, it landed in the grass and the owner was able to quickly pull over and recover it. This could’ve happened to anyone. With the amount of space the top takes up, it’s natural to rest it on the car while in the middle of movings things around in the garage. It’s also easy to not notice the bolts missing, as they’re not exactly in your line of sight when sitting in the car.
The damage wasn’t insignificant, but not beyond the point of no return.
We carefully ground out the chipped resin and used molds pulled from another top to reconstruct the corners. We spliced in new carbon fiber fabric as needed while taking care to not damage the original weave further. After the overall shape of the top was restored, the entire surface was sanded and a new layer of clearcoat was sprayed.
After wetsanding and machine polishing, the top looks incredible. If you look very closely, you might be able to see where new carbon fiber was spliced in. The only way to have a seamless repair on this part would have been to put a new carbon fiber skin over the entire top, as we did with the eBay top we restored. The original resin on this top had also yellowed slightly with age, causing the new resin we added to stand out a bit. With as rare as this top is, it was important to the owner to preserve the original weave as much as possible. So we took the approach we did for a reason, and we’re happy with the results!