Jeep Wrangler TJ Top Replacement Web Extras

Check out how tight the side bolster of the seat is to the TJ rollbar.

Here's a shot of how the plastic covering for the reclining mechanism interferes with the TJ roll bar. We later moved the seats inboard an inch to clear the rollbar. You can also see the hammered area around the latch (look at the damaged paint near the latch) that had to be smacked down for clearance to fit the TJ doors on the YJ.

Here is the passenger side, with the plastic removed. By removing the plastic, we were able to slide the seat back all the way, however still had reclining issues.

Same issue, slightly better view.

This is the TJ stock upper window on the YJ stock lower door. As you can see, the pins to hold it in do line up. However, at the very bottom of this picture, you can see that while the 3rd pin lines up front to back, it would need to get cut, shortened, and rewelded to fit the YJ door.

Look close, and you can see how the tub needed to be clearanced. Also note the upper rear corner of the door is bent out (away from the camera) that is because there is a metal tab there which needs to be folded down so that corner clears the tub.

The long view of the seal. The holes furthest from the ground are the stock ones, the ones the seal is getting pressed into are the new ones. We still have issues with the door needing to be slammed, but it does seal very well.

We went through a ton of parts to figure out the easiest way to finish this swap. Sure we could have busted out the welder to finish it quicker... but it isn't strictly needed. However, since we did have the welder, we decided to weld the corner of the YJ windshield frame, grind it, and repeat for a more finished look. Both frames are off a YJ, the one in the foreground is welded for the TJ seal, the one behind is stock YJ.

Here's another shot of the two frames together, with the addition of the TJ sun visor installed on the one in the foreground. Compare that to your TJ, or your friends TJ to get an idea of just how similar they really are.

Installed shot. Upper left corner of the picture is the factory TJ spreader, in the front you can see the TJ sun visors, the TJ top seal, the TJ header bar, and the factory TJ canvas. All on a YJ windshield mounted in a YJ.

I was aiming for a better shot of how the top sat on the TJ seal, sitting on the TJ windshield here. Again, compare to a TJ to see how well it sits. Just like stock.

Yeah, it's a little out of focus, but you can see how the A-pillar sealing surface (the plastic thing on the left side of the picture, the door surround (upper left corner), the spreader (bar from main hoop to windshield, over the door opening), and the sun visors all kind of work together and need to be in a certain place in relationship with each other.

The end view of the YJ soft top retainer. On the TJ, whether you got a hardtop or soft top, the channel the soft top hooks into is already attached to the body. It is spot welded on the top edge of the body tub from the door opening around to the tailgate opening on both the passenger and driver's side. On the YJ, the channel for the soft top was an extruded piece of aluminum and you only got it if you optioned the soft top. And then, it was bolted to the body tub. On the left is the stock YJ part. On the right is a modified unit to better work with the TJ top. This modification makes the lower edge of the soft top side windows sit flush with the body, just like on the TJ. If you opt to not modify this channel, you will have to trim down the plastic on the TJ window that attaches to the tub. Since we wanted to be able to just order a TJ top and have it fit next time, we took our time this once and trimmed the aluminum down to fit

In this front 3/4 shot, you can see how we finished the windshield off finally... and how well the TJ uppers and lowers match up with the YJ windshield and body. Also, if you've got good eyes or a huge monitor, you can see how the lower edge of the rear side windows are flush with the body, unlike stock YJs.

Here's a close-up view of the corner, you can see the seal the windshield, the top, and the upper door junction. There is a lot of things that have to fall in the same space and line up.

Look at the door, the tailgate, the line of the windows and the top at the body. Everything lines up the way it would if this Jeep were a TJ. But, it's a 94 YJ.

What? Couldn't see it in the last picture? Here's an extreme close-up of the upper corner of the windshield frame.

For those of you without eagle eyes, here is what the window looks like at the body. Compare that to your YJ or CJ.

We also trimmed the stock YJ corner parts, similar to what we did for that extruded aluminum piece. The corner part still pushes a little much on the top for our liking, but short of making a whole new part, there isn't much we can do.

The YJ also inherited the TJ soundbar as part of the swap. No more rear speakers firing right into the top of our heads.

We can't stress enough how much stress everything needing to be in the same place caused us. In this picture, the hole we cut for the header latches is shown in relation to the rest of the YJ, the TJ spreader bar, and the transplanted TJ sun visors

This one, being straight on like it is, really shows the relationship of everything. Get the spreader too far out, the bow won't sit in it right, and the door won't close, too far in, the bow won't sit right (again). This corner of the windshield is basically why we went through so many parts. If you can get this arrangement of pieces in this location, you can put the TJ top on your Jeep... regardless of if you follow exactly what we did, or go your own way

This shows the modified extruded aluminum part mounted on the Jeep. Please note, if you are doing this at home, actually bolt the TJ cage in. Don't just use a few bolts like we did. After we wrote this story, we had to pull it back out again and mini-tub the Jeep for bigger tires. No point in drilling holes we were just going to have to drill again real soon.

In this inside corner shot, if you zoom in, you can see the TJ rear window bar mounts, the modified corner retainer, and how far apart they are from each other.

A close-up of the TJ parts to retain the bottom of the rear window. Installed by reusing the existing YJ holes.

If you look carefully, you can see the strap that keeps tension on the top when the two latches of the header panel are locked down. Look up behind the cage, behind the sound bar. See the black stripe? That's a 6-inch wide nylon belt that provides tension. It replaced the goofy YJ bars that always work themselves loose while driving.

This shows how well the top corner of the door works. Just like it was supposed to on a stock Jeep made at least 4 years later than the one we actually installed this top on.

It looks like it is interfering, and it is. However, it is just canvas against canvas, and doesn't interfere with the door closing. We've seen many TJs with this same interference problem, and while we monkeyed around with it for a while to get it to go away, we ended up fixing that issue, but getting the gap at the top of the door too large. At the end, we decided factory-like interference was ok.