[kdavis]

Are there many of you running these?

I managed to strip out the inner nut (seems kind of self-reflectory...) of the top hardware (just one), and I've heard the replacements are expensive, so thinking about going with the billet disconnects I saw at acmejeepparts.

First of all, how do you prevent this, and do you just have to drill the thing out to get it off?

Secondly, are the billets a good idea?

Thanks.

[kdavis]

Anyone?

[YellowX]

Ok, you have two ways of fixing your problem:
1. Spend about $60 or so on the sun performance billet quick disconnects. I personally have these, but I bought them used (less $$$)and love them. The nice thing is that the ends are both straight instead of angled. Makes the top very tight and less noisy.

2. Spend about $5 at your local hardware store and have basically the same thing, but using your plastic stock ends. This will involved drilling out the ends so that can insert a pin. If you search this forum you will find a writeup on it somewhere. Think this was just recently discussed.

HTH!
Fred

[kdavis]

Thanks...

Just spent $6 at the hardware store, should work fine, and only requires drilling out the plastic and cutting the pins to fit. The billet ones look nice, but hey, $44 is $44, right?

[rkutzner]

I agree with the plastics.

I have the billets (Christmas present) and I will tell you, since they don't give like the plastic ones (notice the plasic ones are bent a little?) the top is alway very tight. Nice, but a bear getting the hinges to hook when putting up the top. If I was old or weak or old and weak, I wouldn't be able to do it.............

[kdavis]

That's good to know. A new top is in the near future, so I don't need it to be any tighter than it already will be.

We'll see if I can drill these things out effectively, and I'll take some pics along the way.

[Scafone]

I just found ALL of mine stripped out, so I removed the brackets from the rollbar (after removing the soft top bars from the plastic disonnects via the small phllips screw). Then I drilled holes in the plastic pieces opposite the head of the torx head so they could be knocked out with a hammer and drift. Instead of billet disco's, I went to the hardware store and spent $3 for quick release pins to use with the original plastic discos.

[Owen]

...I saw a goiod write up on this on JU one time I will go look for it...

in fact you can simply use small cotter pins the size of the bolt...