John,
Long ago I wondered similarly, and bought a Moss vinyl cover. It had
a canvas-appearing pattern moulded into the vinyl and the color was about
right. It served well for many years and was water proof except for
drips from the zipper. Good product, it did what I expected. It didn't
look bad. In truth, it looked pretty good, though it was obviously vinyl.
But I never liked its appearance, and I wasn't all that sad when it got
so brittle after about 25 years that replacement zippers would not sew in
well and replacement lift-the-dot snaps would not hold in the ageing
plastic.
It was replaced by a stay-fast tonneau from LBCar, which was $100
less expensive than Moss's stayfast, but is not cut to the same pattern
and does not fit as well over the dash humps. I am not concerned about
its water-shedding ability as stayfast is pretty water tight, but I am
concerned that garage dust settled on it will get spotty in appearance
when rain does fall onto it. Stayfast is fine stuff, and it's a
question about dirt, not about the fabric.
So, since there is so much storage space in a TD, I added yet another
thing to the kit. This is a blue plastic tarp, perhaps 4x6 feet, with
pieces of elastic cord (bungee cord, shock cord) at each grommet with
plastic hooks on the ends. When rain is immenent I can pull this tarp
out, cover the windscreen & tonneau back to the spare tire, or cover
windscreen and top, and be sure that there will be no drips from the
zipper and that the wiper motor will stay dry too.
Once I had the new tonneau in hand, it occurred to me that if one has
a good pattern from which to work, sewing a tonneau isn't that big a job.
Check out www.sailrite.com for their assortment of fabrics and threads.
They carry Sunbrella, Top Gun, Odyssey, plus Otis Permaseal (formerly
Vivatex), and some duck. I need to replace my top in the next couple
of years, and am noodling the idea of getting samples of the Permaseal
and their ducks, to see how close in texture and colour they might be to
the original side curtains. The top is a far more intimidating project,
one that I might decide after experimentation to abandon.
Bob
On Tue, 29 Mar 2005 22:16:08 EST MGTD2@aol.com writes:
> It's been about 24 years since I've had a tonneau cover for the TD
> and
> started to think maybe I should send Moss Motors some money before
> their sale runs
> out on April 3rd. Since I'm many years past the councours
> presentation phase of
> ownership, I began to wonder if the vinyl cover wouldn't be the more
>
> practical choice. My intention is to keep rain out of a parked car
> and eyeballs out
> of my "hidden" luggage.
>
> Whaddya think: Stayfast vs vinyl?
>
> How about the product from Moss? Does the vinyl look like cheap
> boat
> upholstery?
>
> John Deikis
> Chelsea, MI
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