I had my original soft top replaced by the dealer under warranty. They subbed the work out. I had thought they did a good job until I recently had to replace the soft top myself. I found they did not replace half of the fasteners, they cut plastic where they could not easily reach some of the fasteners. When I removed the drivers side roll bar the the cover fell apart. I'm not sure how they got it to stay together for 6 years!

I tried epoxy, which did not hold. After researching on S2k I gave up on glue and zip tied them temporarily while looking to buy a new hoop/bar.

Over the weekend I tried a different approach. I took a piece of kydex (can be purchased on EBay for $5) and heated it in the oven until malleable. I then held it on the bottom side of the rool hoop to form fit as it cooled. I used a sander to finish the the edges. Drilled 4 small screw holes and then screwed it into place ( with the zip ties holding the hoop together). You can use that small right angle screw driver you bought to put the new top on.

I am happy with how it came out. I had planned on painting the screw heads black but I had used stainless screws and they won't take the paint. I will just pick up some black screws next time I am at the hardware store. The fix is not visible from most angles. Unless you are behind the roll hoop and looking from trunk level it does not show.

Pictures to follow.

 

 

Chiming in here for anyone who also has this problem. I followed your advice, and created a "patch' for the hoop as well. Worked great, and I will live with this over the messy glue job that seems to only be a temporary solution. I will look and see if someone will donate me a discarded roll hoop and research some possible alternate fixes. But for now, I really like this fix. thanks winter5470.

 

My body shop split my hoops. I ended up prying them open and roughing out the spots where they fit back together with a dremel and cutting small notches on the interior side. I used Devcon plastic epoxy and put it into every mating surface. Squeezed it together using clamps and wiped away excess epoxy. I've tried prying them apart to see if it holds and its doing well so far.

 

Those patches look bad imo, just buy used ones that are not split. I have a set for sale lol

 

It's a hit or miss using epoxy. I just recently epoxied mine a few weeks ago and it has held up so far. I didn't mind buying a used one, but the effort to remove and replace them was what convinced me t epoxy it first. So far so good.

 

use zip ties to hold them together then drip crazy glue down the sides and after bout 1 day u can cut zip ties off. 03 but wanted the 05 up speaker hoops to put my kicker tweeters in them

 

This is a years old thread, but I thought I'd reply for others. You can actually re weld them together using a battery charger and the embedded wire.

The way Honda put them together was to put a piece of wire in the joint and heat it while the halves were clamped together. The hot wire melted the plastic around it. If you expose the ends of the wire on the inside you can do the same thing using a battery charger to heat the wire. You need to expose the ends of the wire, and in the case of the center of the hoop, cut the wire and then expose the ends. Then use some alligator clamps to attach the battery charger.

You need to clamp the halves very well. I used multiple small bungie cords on mine. The halves need to stay securely clamped during the melting and cooling process.

You only need a few seconds of current to heat the wire hot enough to melt the plastic. I probably had the power supply on 5-10 seconds on the 10 amp setting on the center and maybe 10-15 seconds on the perimeter. The joint got hot as felt from the outside, but not melting. There were wisps of smoke from where the wire exited.

Once it cooled it was solid.

 

what kind of battery charger did you use?

 

Just a regular 12V car battery charger. The type you can get at Walmart for $40. Mine has 2A, 10A and 50A settings. I had it set at 10A.