DIY: VIS Mugen Hardtop Install
11-07-2010, 04:54 PM
#1
Registered User
Thread Starter
DIY: VIS Mugen Hardtop Install
Hey all, I am going to attempt to do a write up on how to install the VIS Mugen hardtop since alot of people have been asking me a lot of questions. I didnt think about doing this until it was all on, so forgive me for not taking full detailed pics with the top off. I will try to describe everything the best I can. First few things, do not tell me I should not have put the window in before paint. I have to wait a few months until paint, and i'm probably going to upgrade to glass after its all painted. I also want to thanks gbperformance for getting me this hardtop for an awesome price, and shipping it to me so quick. Chin has awesome communication and is one of the best vendors I have done business with on this fourm. If you are interested in one of these hardtops, he still has a few spots left open in his group buy, so go check it out.
1. Get a helper, this will make things go ALOT smoother. My girlfriend happily helped me with this no problem.
2. Get your tools ready. There isnt to much that you need to do this job, but the main things you need are:
Ratchet
10mm socket
12mm socket
5/32 allen wrech
Phillips screwdriver
3M Window Weld (Optional, see step 4 for details)
Caulking gun (Also optional if you install your own rear window)
Blow Dryer (To heat up seals so they are stickier)
Shin Etsu Grease (to fix squeaks after install)
3. Install the seals on the driver and passenger side where the windows will be contacting. In your hardware kit there will be 2 of these, and they are the biggest seals in the kit so its hard to get these confused. These seals have an adhesive backing so you can simply just stick it to the top. **I would highly recommend heating these up with a blow dryer first, it will make them stick a lot better*** Peel off the backing and start at the front of the top, and leave an extra inch or so of the seal sticking out. Go along the edge pushing with quite a bit of pressure on it as you stick it on. Going around the corner is the hardest part. If you take your time and hold pressure on it you shouldnt have any problems. Keep going along until you have done the whole thing. DO NOT TRIM IT OFF YET! If you have alot left, leave a good 2-3" of the seal sticking out of the bottom, trust me.
It should look a little something like this once installed.
4. (Optional. If you dont feel safe doing this, it is highly recommended that you get this installed by a window shop, or the body shop that paints your top) Install the rear window. Like I said i'm going to get a new glass one installed in a few months when I get it painted, so I just did mine like this for now with no problems. There will be a long thin rubber seal in your hardware kit. Get that out and you will see that it has a really thin U shape along the whole thing on one side, and a flat long side on the other. This thin U shape is where the seal will be inserted on the window. It already has some adhesive material inside of it so it will stick to the window well.
I started mine in the center on the bottom of the window. This can be sorta tricky so take your time with it. Make sure its done right the first time. Start wherever you want on the window, and insert the little U shape part of the seal onto the window. You just have to push on the seal and wiggle it back and forth, and it will work its way onto the window. Do this around the entire window and you will have a little extra left. Be sure not to cut this to short of you will have a gap. It can be filled with the window caulking, but its better just to make the gap as small as possible. Trim small amounts off until it fits how you want it. You are now done with the seal around the window.
Now its time to put the window into the hardtop. There is of course the indention part where the window will set. Drop your window in there to make sure its all going to line up right the way you want it to, then take the window back out. Get your handy 3M Windo Weld (can be found at your local Autozone) and caulking gun ready. This stuff is black so you have to be careful with it. What you want to do is make a good bead of the caulking all the way around the indention. The best place I see is to do it in the outside corners, this will help it from pushing out onto your new window. After you get it all the way around, insert your window into the top. I put some weights on mine and left it like that for a while just to be sure it was in there good. I waited about 8 hours just to be safe before I messed with it more. I put a little pressure on the inside of the window and made sure it wasnt going to just pop out. If yours is starting to come out, you either need more caulking, or you need to let it dry longer. If it seems good, you are good to go.
The red line in first pic is just showing where you need to put the caulking. Do a good line all the way around the opening (I didnt outline the entire trim of the top in the pic, this is just an example) of the top in the same spot I show in this pic.
5. Installing the rear seal. Okay now its time to install the rear main seal of the hardtop. Get your helper and turn the hardtop upside down, and try to set it on some carpet or something that wont scratch your top. Get the long medium size seal out of your hardware kit. It's the longest seal in the hardware kit. This seal also has an adhesive backing so its as simple as just peeling the backing off, and running it along bottom of the top. Peel about 6" of the backing off so the adhesive backing is exposed. Start on either side of the top by where the side windows will be. Leave a good couple inches of the seal sticking off just like the big side window seals, you will have enough to do the top and a little extra. I originally did this wrong and went on the outside edges, thanks to the people that corrected me.
Also I would highly recommend getting some Shin Etsu Grease from Honda. I installed my top without this, and it squeaked bad, and even more in the cold weather. I took the top off and applied this grease to the bottom of the rear seal, and it all completely went away. This is how the rear seal should look.
6. While your hardtop is still upside down, go to your car and take off your soft top latches. Unlatch each one, and you will see 2 phillips head bolts holding these in. Remove the 2 bolts and latches will come right off. There are already new allen head bolts in the VIS top where the latches go, so you dont need your old phillips head bolts anymore. Go to your hardtop and take out the 2 allen key bolts, these are just lightly screwed in and should be able to unscrew them with your hand. Line up your latch with the holes in the top, and insert the bolts back into the holes, and use your 5/32 allen key to snug them up. Do not tighten them all the way yet since you may have to adjust them a little bit once on the car. Do this to both latches.
7. Okay now you are done with getting the hardtop ready, but you need to get your car ready for installation now. First thing you need to do is push your seat up as far as it will go. It helps alot if you take the seatbelt off the little plastic peice that attaches the seatbelt to the seat. There is a little slit that you can slide it right off. Now you can push your seat up farther and dont have the belt in your way. Now the first thing you need to do is take the door sill off. They are just clipped in, so its as simple and tugging on them some and they will pop right off. Now look behind your seat, there is a plastic panel with the vents in them and the 2 little hooks, this need to come off next. The 2 little hooks have little covers on them you can easily open with your fingers. There will be a phillips head screw in each of these hooks that you have to remove. After the screws are out the hooks will pop off. You can now tug on this panel and it should pop right off. These are plastic and will break, so dont be to aggressive pulling on them.
In this pic, the left hook cover is open with the screw exposed, the right one is how it looks before you pop it open.
Okay now that panel is off, you need to take off the big plastic panel next to it. There will be one little plastic clip you need to take out that you may need a pair of plyers to remove (I circled where the clip is on the pic below in red) Then just like all the other panels, it should pop right off. This one you need to pull towards the front of the car to remove, and it should come off pretty easily.
This is all you have to do right now on the inside of the car.
8. Finally, its time to get the top onto the car. Get your helper to carry the top over to your s2000. Make sure to hold it high, and one person needs to walk to the other side of the car to get it set on. Line it up the best you can before setting it down so you dont damage or scratch anything. You might have to move it around a bit to get it perfectly how you want it. Now you need to go get your side brackets out of your hardware kit. Get into your car (I did the driver side with my knees in the passenger seat, and vice versa for the other side. It made it alot easier for me anyways) There should be 3 allen key bolts/washers on each side of the top, remove these and try not to drop a washer or bolt. If you look in my pic below, you will be able to see which bracket is which. You dont have to worry about mixing these up because there is only 1 way to get these on.
I started mine by holding the bracket up to the top, and putting the 3 allen head bolts into the top, but barely screwed them in a few threads so they dont come out. This way the bracket is held in place, and will have alot of room for adjustment. Now there are 2 bolts that need to come off the inside of the car where the bracket bolts to the car. You will obviously see which ones need to come out, but I still have a pic. Take these bolts out, and dont be alarmed if there is a small distance between the bracket and the holes it has to line up with. Get your helper to go on the outside of the car, and push on or put weight strait down onto the top, this will get the bracket holes to line up with the holes in the car. Then get each bolt threaded in a little bit and then your partner can let off. Now go do this to the other side exactly the same way.
The silver bolt is a 10mm, and the gold one is a 12mm.
Now you can start to tighten down the allen head bolts. These are exactly like your latch bolts so get your 5/32 allen wrech out and tighten all 3 down very snug. Go to the other side, do the same. When you tighten once side, it might loosen the other side a bit since its adjusting, so go to each side and tighten until it is decently hard to turn the allen wrench.
9. You are now ready to latch the front down with your soft top latches. Try and latch them to make sure they are going to line up properly. If they line up, tighten these bolts the rest of the way since in a step before this we didnt tighten them all the way. If it doesnt match up, its as easy and loosening them a little bit, adjusting, and tightening. Now latch the front of the top down. You have now got the top securely in.
In this pic you can see the allen bolts in the latch
10. Now since its on the car, you can now trim your door seals, and rear seal perfectly where you need them.
11. Check for leaks. I used a bright flashlight on the inside of the top, and had my helper walk around the outside of the top to see if they could see any light coming through the cracks of the seals. If you see some light, you can try to push on the seal there to try and adjust it, but you may have to take the top back off to re-adjust the seal.
12. Reinstall all of your plastic peices in the exact order you removed them, just in reverse.
Final pics of everything installed. Please excuse how dirty everything is, it was very windy when doing this and blew dust all over the inside and outside of the car.
Extras:
Hardtop seal review I did, VIS vs Spyder: https://www.s2ki.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=838164
Shim kit (helps stop wind noise from above windshield at higher speeds, and doesnt cost near as much as OEM strikers. Thanks lonewolf for the link):
http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/S2000-Soft-...=item43a3fadf96
Shin Etsu Grease (when you have a squeaky top, this does wonders. I used this on my top because it squeaked on every bump, I applied this to the main rear seal and it no longer makes any noise)
http://www.handa-accessories.com/s2000-03maint.html (scroll down until you see the Shin Etsu Grease, it is in a white tube with a green rectangle on it. It cost only $11.89)
1. Get a helper, this will make things go ALOT smoother. My girlfriend happily helped me with this no problem.
2. Get your tools ready. There isnt to much that you need to do this job, but the main things you need are:
Ratchet
10mm socket
12mm socket
5/32 allen wrech
Phillips screwdriver
3M Window Weld (Optional, see step 4 for details)
Caulking gun (Also optional if you install your own rear window)
Blow Dryer (To heat up seals so they are stickier)
Shin Etsu Grease (to fix squeaks after install)
3. Install the seals on the driver and passenger side where the windows will be contacting. In your hardware kit there will be 2 of these, and they are the biggest seals in the kit so its hard to get these confused. These seals have an adhesive backing so you can simply just stick it to the top. **I would highly recommend heating these up with a blow dryer first, it will make them stick a lot better*** Peel off the backing and start at the front of the top, and leave an extra inch or so of the seal sticking out. Go along the edge pushing with quite a bit of pressure on it as you stick it on. Going around the corner is the hardest part. If you take your time and hold pressure on it you shouldnt have any problems. Keep going along until you have done the whole thing. DO NOT TRIM IT OFF YET! If you have alot left, leave a good 2-3" of the seal sticking out of the bottom, trust me.
It should look a little something like this once installed.
4. (Optional. If you dont feel safe doing this, it is highly recommended that you get this installed by a window shop, or the body shop that paints your top) Install the rear window. Like I said i'm going to get a new glass one installed in a few months when I get it painted, so I just did mine like this for now with no problems. There will be a long thin rubber seal in your hardware kit. Get that out and you will see that it has a really thin U shape along the whole thing on one side, and a flat long side on the other. This thin U shape is where the seal will be inserted on the window. It already has some adhesive material inside of it so it will stick to the window well.
I started mine in the center on the bottom of the window. This can be sorta tricky so take your time with it. Make sure its done right the first time. Start wherever you want on the window, and insert the little U shape part of the seal onto the window. You just have to push on the seal and wiggle it back and forth, and it will work its way onto the window. Do this around the entire window and you will have a little extra left. Be sure not to cut this to short of you will have a gap. It can be filled with the window caulking, but its better just to make the gap as small as possible. Trim small amounts off until it fits how you want it. You are now done with the seal around the window.
Now its time to put the window into the hardtop. There is of course the indention part where the window will set. Drop your window in there to make sure its all going to line up right the way you want it to, then take the window back out. Get your handy 3M Windo Weld (can be found at your local Autozone) and caulking gun ready. This stuff is black so you have to be careful with it. What you want to do is make a good bead of the caulking all the way around the indention. The best place I see is to do it in the outside corners, this will help it from pushing out onto your new window. After you get it all the way around, insert your window into the top. I put some weights on mine and left it like that for a while just to be sure it was in there good. I waited about 8 hours just to be safe before I messed with it more. I put a little pressure on the inside of the window and made sure it wasnt going to just pop out. If yours is starting to come out, you either need more caulking, or you need to let it dry longer. If it seems good, you are good to go.
The red line in first pic is just showing where you need to put the caulking. Do a good line all the way around the opening (I didnt outline the entire trim of the top in the pic, this is just an example) of the top in the same spot I show in this pic.
5. Installing the rear seal. Okay now its time to install the rear main seal of the hardtop. Get your helper and turn the hardtop upside down, and try to set it on some carpet or something that wont scratch your top. Get the long medium size seal out of your hardware kit. It's the longest seal in the hardware kit. This seal also has an adhesive backing so its as simple as just peeling the backing off, and running it along bottom of the top. Peel about 6" of the backing off so the adhesive backing is exposed. Start on either side of the top by where the side windows will be. Leave a good couple inches of the seal sticking off just like the big side window seals, you will have enough to do the top and a little extra. I originally did this wrong and went on the outside edges, thanks to the people that corrected me.
Also I would highly recommend getting some Shin Etsu Grease from Honda. I installed my top without this, and it squeaked bad, and even more in the cold weather. I took the top off and applied this grease to the bottom of the rear seal, and it all completely went away. This is how the rear seal should look.6. While your hardtop is still upside down, go to your car and take off your soft top latches. Unlatch each one, and you will see 2 phillips head bolts holding these in. Remove the 2 bolts and latches will come right off. There are already new allen head bolts in the VIS top where the latches go, so you dont need your old phillips head bolts anymore. Go to your hardtop and take out the 2 allen key bolts, these are just lightly screwed in and should be able to unscrew them with your hand. Line up your latch with the holes in the top, and insert the bolts back into the holes, and use your 5/32 allen key to snug them up. Do not tighten them all the way yet since you may have to adjust them a little bit once on the car. Do this to both latches.
7. Okay now you are done with getting the hardtop ready, but you need to get your car ready for installation now. First thing you need to do is push your seat up as far as it will go. It helps alot if you take the seatbelt off the little plastic peice that attaches the seatbelt to the seat. There is a little slit that you can slide it right off. Now you can push your seat up farther and dont have the belt in your way. Now the first thing you need to do is take the door sill off. They are just clipped in, so its as simple and tugging on them some and they will pop right off. Now look behind your seat, there is a plastic panel with the vents in them and the 2 little hooks, this need to come off next. The 2 little hooks have little covers on them you can easily open with your fingers. There will be a phillips head screw in each of these hooks that you have to remove. After the screws are out the hooks will pop off. You can now tug on this panel and it should pop right off. These are plastic and will break, so dont be to aggressive pulling on them.
In this pic, the left hook cover is open with the screw exposed, the right one is how it looks before you pop it open.
Okay now that panel is off, you need to take off the big plastic panel next to it. There will be one little plastic clip you need to take out that you may need a pair of plyers to remove (I circled where the clip is on the pic below in red) Then just like all the other panels, it should pop right off. This one you need to pull towards the front of the car to remove, and it should come off pretty easily.
This is all you have to do right now on the inside of the car.
8. Finally, its time to get the top onto the car. Get your helper to carry the top over to your s2000. Make sure to hold it high, and one person needs to walk to the other side of the car to get it set on. Line it up the best you can before setting it down so you dont damage or scratch anything. You might have to move it around a bit to get it perfectly how you want it. Now you need to go get your side brackets out of your hardware kit. Get into your car (I did the driver side with my knees in the passenger seat, and vice versa for the other side. It made it alot easier for me anyways) There should be 3 allen key bolts/washers on each side of the top, remove these and try not to drop a washer or bolt. If you look in my pic below, you will be able to see which bracket is which. You dont have to worry about mixing these up because there is only 1 way to get these on.
I started mine by holding the bracket up to the top, and putting the 3 allen head bolts into the top, but barely screwed them in a few threads so they dont come out. This way the bracket is held in place, and will have alot of room for adjustment. Now there are 2 bolts that need to come off the inside of the car where the bracket bolts to the car. You will obviously see which ones need to come out, but I still have a pic. Take these bolts out, and dont be alarmed if there is a small distance between the bracket and the holes it has to line up with. Get your helper to go on the outside of the car, and push on or put weight strait down onto the top, this will get the bracket holes to line up with the holes in the car. Then get each bolt threaded in a little bit and then your partner can let off. Now go do this to the other side exactly the same way.
The silver bolt is a 10mm, and the gold one is a 12mm.
Now you can start to tighten down the allen head bolts. These are exactly like your latch bolts so get your 5/32 allen wrech out and tighten all 3 down very snug. Go to the other side, do the same. When you tighten once side, it might loosen the other side a bit since its adjusting, so go to each side and tighten until it is decently hard to turn the allen wrench.
9. You are now ready to latch the front down with your soft top latches. Try and latch them to make sure they are going to line up properly. If they line up, tighten these bolts the rest of the way since in a step before this we didnt tighten them all the way. If it doesnt match up, its as easy and loosening them a little bit, adjusting, and tightening. Now latch the front of the top down. You have now got the top securely in.
In this pic you can see the allen bolts in the latch
10. Now since its on the car, you can now trim your door seals, and rear seal perfectly where you need them.
11. Check for leaks. I used a bright flashlight on the inside of the top, and had my helper walk around the outside of the top to see if they could see any light coming through the cracks of the seals. If you see some light, you can try to push on the seal there to try and adjust it, but you may have to take the top back off to re-adjust the seal.
12. Reinstall all of your plastic peices in the exact order you removed them, just in reverse.
Final pics of everything installed. Please excuse how dirty everything is, it was very windy when doing this and blew dust all over the inside and outside of the car.
Extras:
Hardtop seal review I did, VIS vs Spyder: https://www.s2ki.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=838164
Shim kit (helps stop wind noise from above windshield at higher speeds, and doesnt cost near as much as OEM strikers. Thanks lonewolf for the link):
http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/S2000-Soft-...=item43a3fadf96
Shin Etsu Grease (when you have a squeaky top, this does wonders. I used this on my top because it squeaked on every bump, I applied this to the main rear seal and it no longer makes any noise)
http://www.handa-accessories.com/s2000-03maint.html (scroll down until you see the Shin Etsu Grease, it is in a white tube with a green rectangle on it. It cost only $11.89)
11-07-2010, 07:01 PM
#5
Registered User
Thread Starter
^ That is the new seal VIS now includes with the tops. Some people complained about having gaps with their smaller rear seal, so this that is what they are now including.
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11-07-2010, 07:14 PM
#9
Registered User
Thread Starter
Originally Posted by JerseyDude,Nov 7 2010, 11:13 PM
shouldn't you have had the hardtop painted before you put the window in?
