Hi,
I recently purchased my second MX5, a 1993 ‘K’ Eunos V-Special 1.6, however it was being sold cheap due to some rather lovely people slashing the roof to break in and steal a grand total of 2 things. The previous owner’s stereo facia and their prescription glasses idiots
However, I was left with the task of deliberating if the roof could be salvaged at least for a couple of months to allow me to save up some pennies for either a new vinyl roof or perhaps a hard top.
Having done a little research on forums such as this, I yielded a few saddening responses stating that I was a little outta luck… However! FEAR NOT!
My father and myself managed to knock a repair up which actually has proven to be an effective (and for now at least) a long term repair.
The details are as follows:
The slash was in the front ‘soft spot’ of the roof pretty much from seam to seam, left to right with a small slit from the slash forwards over the driver’s seat (will post pictures tomorrow) it measured about 2-3 foot across with the smaller slit being about 4 inches. As the vinyl rooves are usually quite taught the ends would not butt up properly to each other, however the first step of the repair was to stitch it up almost as though it was ‘laced’ together. (As stated previous will put up drawings of this tomorrow)
Then we covered both outside and inside with black gaffa tape (I guess it doesnt HAVE to be black… lol) which didnt seem to stick to anything properly other than itself. After that was put on we covered this with two strips of bitumen ‘flashing’ tape usually used on roofing. The best way to make it adhere to the gaffa tape was to heat it with a hairdryer to soften the bitumen and then leave it to cool again to adhere better.
This still didnt seem a perfect seal, even though it was relatively waterproof, so we then proceeded to seal the edges with glue gun glue. This had the effect of heating the bitumen and also mixing with it. I am sure that some bright spark who does chemistry could explain the exact process, but all I care about is the fact that it sticks like nobody’s business!
and that is pretty much it. It’s been on there for about a month now and, for anyone who lives in the UK, we’ve had some pretty attrocious weather for the past month, so if it was gonna leak it would have by now!
I even managed to put the roof down on the rare sunshine day we had to test it. You have to be a bit careful, but the bitumen flashing tape is still flexible enough to fold and then re-open. It gets more flexible when it’s warm too, so when you are more likely to have the roof down (when the sun is on it) it is easier to flod down and to open up again.
The only thing I would say is that you should do your best to make the roof as taught as you can as it will help prevent it from sagging too much so rain water doesn’t puddle on the roof as, whilst I’ve had no problems, I doubt it’d be fantastic for the roof…
If you have any extra questions or anything I haven’t covered then be sure to post it and I’ll try to help!
