Ok - I bit the bullet and spent alot of money on something that I would prefer not to use most of the time....A soft top
I picked up the Bestop TigerTop for 69-72 Blazer & Jimmy models, part number BES-51315 - only available in snap design and black vinyl. I have not seen a write-up for the install of this top, so I figured I would document my installation.
For starters, the provided instructions are fairly good, so this won't be a step-by-step, but a photo diary and a highlight of the issues that come up and the items not well defined in the instructions. A pdf of the instruction set can be found at
http://www.bestop.com/installation_guides/51315.pdf which, oddly enough, is not the same version as what came with my top, but it has the same details.
I had no top at all, so I picked up a dozen SS 5/16"-18 bolts, washers and nylon locknuts, as the soft top reuses the hardtop hardware.
The first few steps involve bolting in the rails and bow brackets, as shown in the first two photos.
The third shows the parts that form the new window surrounds and the fourth shows the template in place for the windshield snaps.
Photo 5 is the first ‘not enough detail’ item. The front brackets are L-shaped, with a large hole on one side for the rod and 2 smaller holes on the opposite side. The directions for this step (Horizontal Bracket & Figure 5, if your reading along on the pdf) was pretty vague, so what I did was use the lower small hole and sandwiched the bracket between the windshield steel and the weatherstripping, because I could not get it to work any other way. I also tried the top hole, but this angled the front of the window surround too low. I am still not 100% sure this is correct.
Photo 6 shows the windshield snaps in place – ignore the old snaps from some top concoction of the PO.
Photos 7, 8 and 9 show the completed install from various angles.
continued below (too many photos).....