It is no secret that we like soft-top Jeeps, but ever since the dawn of Jeepdom, putting the top up and down is more of a juggling act than a pleasure. It often gets to be so much of a chore that we just leave the top up all the time except for those really nice weeks. The easy way to get rid of a lot of the complexity is to ditch the bows and metal frame. Sure, there have been frameless tops out there before, but there was always a huge "but" to them. They pooled with water, they leaked at all the places the windows attached, you couldn't actually order them even though they were on the company's website-the list goes on and on. There are finally a couple of viable options on the market, and after weighing our choices, we went with a black Rampage frameless top.
The Rampage top offers a lot of features for the price. There are overhead storage pockets for both the driver and front seat passenger, larger-than-stock windows are tinted by default, there is an on-board window storage bag, and the top easily converts to a safari-style bikini top for that open air experience. The fabric actually feels thicker than the factory soft top did and we lost a lot of the unneeded complexity of bow-riddled top systems.
As of this writing, the top is only available for the TJ, with LJ versions coming soon. By the time you read this, the company hopes to have the LJ version available. It is available in your choice of spice or black fabric.
Can a frameless soft top really replace the tried-and-true framed tops? Is the install really a one-hour affair as the instructions claim? Most importantly, can a top that costs hundreds of dollars less than its competition still compete? Follow along as we subject our long-suffering '01 TJ to a real-life, hand-as-only-tool install, and in true Jp magazine fashion, bring you our honest opinion of how it went.
How's It Work
While it would be possible to stow the windows in the storage bag and then remove and roll up the entire top to stow behind the rear set, we don't see ourselves doing that. With the hot SoCal sun, we will just leave the safari portion of the top up. Having the on-board storage bag is awesome because it will help protect the windows from scratching and the overhead storage is perfect for cell phones or a wallet. The fiberglass rods over the front seat passengers should help with snow, but between the rear window and the lack of bows we'd be hesitant to run this as a year-round top where it snows a lot and the Jeep sits outside. There is a bit less headroom for the back seat passengers, so if you have tall rear passengers, they might be inconvenienced. Whenever we have a tall passenger back there it is typically only one passenger, and if they sit sort of sideways, it alleviates the headroom issue anyway. Overall we are happy with the fit, the features, the look, the ease of install, and the price of this top.
The first step is to take...
The first step is to take off whatever factory top you have and toss it. You will need to keep your factory door surrounds or pick a set up from a junkyard if you only have a hard top. You'll need the Rampage header bar, and either a stock or Rampage tailgate bar and brackets for the rear window to attach to.
As with every new soft-top...
As with every new soft-top install, pick a warm day and lay the top out in the sun for a few hours before starting the actual install. The sun will help to soften up the tight brand-new fabric and make the whole install go smoother. Since we were doing this at Trasborg's dirt farm, laying the top out in the grass wasn't an option so we used the next big green thing we could find.
The top install really is...
The top install really is that easy. Even with taking pictures and notes we got it done in less than two hours. About a half hour of that was figuring out how the foam that supports the top over the spreader bars was supposed to install. The instructions explain the procedure, but don't provide a very good picture of it. By bending the foam into a "U" shape, the canvas is kept off of the hand-screws that retain the factory door surrounds.
For the life of us, we couldn't...
For the life of us, we couldn't figure out how a window storage bag could be kept in the top. We discovered the answer after we had the top half-installed. The rear half of the top consists of an inner panel, a nylon window bag that Velcro's to the inner panel, and an outer panel that covers the zippers for the side windows and the top juncture of the rear window. The inner and outer panels are both made from the same heavy-duty fabric as the rest of the top.
The instructions state to...
The instructions state to insert the front edge of the side windows into the door surround. We found that if we put the whole edge in, we couldn't get the rear window zipped. If we zipped the rear window first and didn't put the front edge in at all, we felt like we were in danger of ripping the top by stretching it over the surround. The final answer was to put about 6 to 8 inches of that leading edge in, zip the window about halfway down, then finish with the side windows. Note that the side windows are much larger than the factory windows.
The only thing we'd change...
The only thing we'd change on the top would be the attachment of the upper edge of the rear window. It attaches with three adjustable straps for tension, but we feel that the top edge of the window is too close to the edge of the outer panel top. The side windows have about a 4-inch overlap whereas the rear window has barely 1-inch. When we sprayed the top with water from the hose, we ended up with water ingress at the rear window, but not on the sides. Granted, directed water from a hose is worse than most rain storms, but we still worry that rain could get in at the top edge of that rear window. Also note how much bigger the rear window is than the factory window.