Hard Top holder?

[NavyVet1959]

I've got plenty of room to have the window up in the circled area. Assuming i back in.

That area doesn't look wide enough for the entire width of the hard top.

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[BlairF]

Whole thing no... But i could line up the back of the top, or even go a bit further back, if i needed the window open.

 

[NavyVet1959]

Ever since i bought my RAM (Which i traded for the Jeep) I have always backed every car in, everywhere... that won't stop.

Because the spare tire sticks up higher than the front hood, you're going to still want to store the top as far back as possible in the garage and park as close to the garage door as possible. Otherwise, the spare tire might hit one of the sides of the hardtop when you are backing in and you could end up damaging it.

 

[BlairF]

Because the spare tire sticks up higher than the front hood, you're going to still want to store the top as far back as possible in the garage and park as close to the garage door as possible. Otherwise, the spare tire might hit one of the sides of the hardtop when you are backing in and you could end up damaging it.

Excellent point.

 

[NavyVet1959]

Whole thing no... But i could line up the back of the top, or even go a bit further back, if i needed the window open.

I saw some brackets that mount on the hinges for the rear glass on the hardtop that would allow you to hang it more easily and with the glass closed, IIRC. I think a lot of the lift systems that I have seen appear to be doing a lift with the glass open. At the very first though, it seems that you have to have the glass up just to get it past the rear tire (unless you have such a tall garage that you can lift it above your rear tire. Even without your garage storage racks, I don't think your garage is tall enough for that.

The old saying, "100 lbs of shit in a 50 lb bag" comes to mind... Been there, done that, got the t-shirt...

 

[NavyVet1959]

Is there room to rotate the storage shelves 90 degrees so that they are more oriented fore and aft in the garage? If so, then that might give some more options. It looks like if you did that it would give you a tall center area that would be wide enough to raise the hardtop on a hoist all the way to the ceiling. What are the dimensions of the storage racks?

 

[NavyVet1959]

If you want to get an idea of what it is going to be like to back in with the hardtop hanging in your existing area, you could try this for an experiment:

1. Get (2) 2x4s that are 8 ft long.
2. Back into your garage where you plan on removing your hard top.
3. Raise up on the front of your hard top from the inside of the vehicle and side one of the 2x4s underneath the front of the hardtop. You might want to put a bit of carpet or foam there to protect it from the possibility of scratches.
4. Raise up the rear of the hard top and slide the other 2x4 underneath the aft section it.
5. Now you need to raise up these 2x4s as far as possible so that you can park underneath them. This can either be done from the ground or the ceiling. To do it from the ground, support the ends of the 2x4s with something that you have around your workshop -- shelves that can move, a large stack of concrete blocks, barrels, or whatever. To do it from the ceiling, run some straps from the ceiling or your storage shelves to eye bolts installed near the end of the 2x4s. You could use some of the winching type cargo straps that are used for motorcycle tie-downs also. You want to get it up as high as possible so that you don't hit it when you are backing into your garage.
6. Try backing in the garage and see how it feels. If it is acceptable, then we can make changes for a more permanent and secure system. You don't want a system that could result in the hardtop dropping if you were hit by strong winds when the garage door was open. We sometimes get those when hurricanes and tropical storms hit here.

I guess I'm kind of lucky... If I was so inclined to remove my hard top, since my wife drives a sedan, I would not even have to raise the hardtop very high for her car to still be able to fit in there. Besides, I don't have shelves like that anyway since I have a detached garage with no sheetrock covering the ceiling, so I can store stuff up there out of the way without needing the shelves like you had to put in your "finished" style of garage. There's advantages and disadvantages of every design though.

 

[Sgt Beavis]

I saw some brackets that mount on the hinges for the rear glass on the hardtop that would allow you to hang it more easily and with the glass closed, IIRC.

The bracket he is referring to is here: http://www.topsyproducts.com/

NavyVet has this covered pretty well, I see no need to comment further.

 

[NavyVet1959]

The bracket he is referring to is here: http://www.topsyproducts.com/

NavyVet has this covered pretty well, I see no need to comment further.

Yep, that's the one I saw in an image in another post. I didn't remember the company name though and was too lazy to search for it...

http://topsyproducts.com/common/assets/images/products/Close_up.jpg

 

[NavyVet1959]

From what I've been able to tell, the 4-door JLU's hardtop has a significant front portion that comes over the rear doors and the bottom of it is considerably higher from the ground than the bottom of the rear portion of the hard top which goes down to the level of the tailgate. With the 2-door JL's hardtop, that front portion does not exist, so it's basically the same height front to rear. Personally, I would try to slip that front 2x4 under that "lip" and as far back as possible, until it reaches the vertical portion of the hardtop that drops down to the level of the walls of the bed / tailgate height. This will reduce the pressure that you would be putting on the front of the hardtop since the moment arm would be reduced. We are talking about Houston here and it does get hot. If the hard top is made from ABS plastic, I wouldn't want to see it starting to sag because the plastic had gotten a bit soft throughout the summer. If it is made from fiberglass, then that is less of an issue. I don't have my JL yet, so I can't go look to see what mine is made from. My gut feeling though is that the risks of supporting it at the forward end of the thinner portion far outweigh the benefits.

If the OP's storage platform was in the very center of where he plans on parking the vehicle, there is another option. I've seen garage storage racks similar to his that instead of being attached to the roof with the perforated metal angle strips, they were on cables and there was a winch to raise and lower the storage rack. With that sort of system, there might be room to lower it very close to the hardtop, attach fixed length non-adjustable straps via the 2x4 method that I mentioned earlier, and then raise the storage rack with the hardtop attached to it. If I was doing it, I would probably want some sort of cushioning between the storage rack and the hardtop, just in case I lowered it a bit too far so as not to scratch the hard top.

Here's an example of the garage storage rack that is on cables and can be lifted and lowered.

And depending upon what is above the ceiling of the garage, you could even do something like this:

And with respect to my previous comment about possibly moving the storage racks above the garage door, here's a photo of what I was talking about:

Looks like he has a bit more room above his garage door than some of the houses that I've seen though.

 

[BlairF]

So i have ordered the racor lift, and the topsy brackets... IF i have to, i will move the over head racks lengthwise, as mentioned... Obviously Jeep > Contents of garage.

I sincerely appreciate the feedback given, and also am working to get rid of some of the crap in my garage, gee, thanks Jeep! (Know anyone that wants a supercharged 2014 Challenger RT?) lol

 

[NavyVet1959]

So i have ordered the racor lift, and the topsy brackets... IF i have to, i will move the over head racks lengthwise, as mentioned... Obviously Jeep > Contents of garage.

I sincerely appreciate the feedback given, and also am working to get rid of some of the crap in my garage, gee, thanks Jeep! (Know anyone that wants a supercharged 2014 Challenger RT?) lol

Actually, I wasn't promoting any particular product, I was just using it as an example of what you could possibly do with an existing storage rack if you were so inclined. It's a pretty simple type of lift mechanism. We used to use a similar lift mechanism for lifting boats out of the water at our lakefront dock and it was not powered. Basically it was just a long piece of pipe with a cable on each end that attached to lift points on the boat and then on one end of the pipe, a large wheel that was probably 4-6 ft or so in diameter that you turned by hand. Good enough for the small boats that we had on the lake, maybe a bit more effort for some of the larger boats that you see these days. People with heavier boats would have wheel that was mounted lower and then there was a sprocket on it and another one on the pipe so that they had a further reduction gear.

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