Re: Convertible Top on a '55 Caribbean
Posted by Leeedy On 2020/6/16 18:12:05
Quote:
ewrecks wrote:
I read with interest Leeedy's comments on the difficulty in securing a top with the color matched interior.
I had the misfortune of having a top prepared by Klass Collections that attempted to replicate the original tops by sewing in a fabric liner.
In retrospect.it probably would not have worked very well since the fabric liner added buik and would have probably not responded well to raising and lowering.
As it turned out the top was not cut correctly and the upholstery shop ruined it during the attempt to install.....then Klass Collections advised that they were out of the top business.
Ultimately, I was able to secure 10 yards of the pinpoint with tan inner color through Superior Tops and sprayed the inner side with a water based dye from World Products. Superior assembled a new top from the material and the top looks fine.
Was it worth the effort and expense for a car that was not built for the show circuit....doubtful....very doubtful. But ...it does look nice.
I spoke to a Bill Hirsch at the ACCA meet at Hershey during the debacle and he relate that he had owned a 1955 Caribbean in his youth and that while the looks of the car had inspired its purchase, it was one of the worst cars he ever owned. Aside from the transmission that locked in park and the torsion suspension that either shot skyward or popped up in tu rear and required a tow truck and a cab ride, his biggest gripe was the convertible top. He stated that the material shrunk and would not allow the top to latch. I think he said it needed replaced at least twice during his short term of ownership. The bigger problem was that the front seal at the top of the windshield did not do it's job....the front floors flooded every time the car sat out in the rain. He said he was never so happy to replace a car.
By coincidence , a friend from New Jersey had purchased and restored his original 55 Caribbean and bugged him about buying the car of his youth. Hirsch said that there was not enough money on the planet to pay him to take that car back. LOL
That was my only dealing with Bill Hirsch and I was sorry to see the notice of his passing. I have dealt with the company since that time but Mr Hirsch took the time to shoot the bull with this stranger and gave me a fond memory. R.I. P.
Most people who end up with convertibles never seem to stop and consider that they have the unusual ON TOP OF unusual. No pun intended. They approach owning the convertible as if it is simply another car. A convertible (especially from the 1950s-or any old one) just plain requires extra knowledge and extra care. Extra work. If an owner doesn't choose to accept this responsibility, the results will soon make themselves known.
And different drivers/owners often have different experiences with convertibles. My first ex managed to smash the tempered glass rear window out of my brand-new 1968 GTO convertible-the very FIRST time she lowered the top! (...and this is a person with advanced degrees who had been taught how to operate the top)! Another managed to burn out the transmission on my Cadillac FIRST time driven! One drive! And it was a GM automatic on a Northstar engine-not an Ultramatic on a Packard. ONE afternoon's drive and it came back burned to a crisp! To this day, even the Cadillac dealer (a family member by the way) could never figure out how this was done! The same driver went on to get an umbrella caught in the top mechanism of my Lexus. And this was a highly-educated person. Me? Never had troubles with any of these cars. At least, not those kinds of troubles.
Loved Bill Hirsch and with all due respect, no idea what happened with his 1955 Caribbean. But I owned two of them over the years... and never a problem with the tops OR water leakage OR the Ultramatics. So? It's machinery. Things happen. And there are some cars that are just plain haunted with problems. But this does not condemn all for what happens or happened with one or some.
And I have been over this Ultramatic "locking-in-Park" thing many times. MOST automatic transmissions back then didn't even have a Park position! So this was an advanced feature. Nobody ever points this fact out today while repeating the Ultramatic "locked-up" stories.
Yes there were some issues-especially with maladjusted linkage that created such a problem. Packard addressed this adjustment problem and it WAS repairable- often very easily. Bulletins were issued by the factory. And... as I have said in the past, I have seen 1955 Packards where instead of doing a simple adjustment or analysis, someone (including tow-truck drivers) decided to King-Kong the gearshift lever into submission. This to the extent of bending the lever into the shape of a "J"! I've known of cars that were actually towed off to the junkyard with the transmission supposedly "locked up in Park". When all I had to do was reach under the car and push UP on the linkage ... followed by a popping and "klunk" out of Park! I won a $50 bet with a junkyard guy over this very thing (he wasn't very happy when I drove off with this "junk transmission Packard"). Maladjusted mechanism. It is machinery.
When I was involved with a trim shop in SoCal, we had customers who would show up with tops that wouldn't raise or wouldn't latch... after leaving them down for months... until the rainy season started! Almost always the top was fried from the inside out and shrunk... and worse. Most of the time they never bothered to use the boot-if they even had one! Nobody ever checked the rams or cleaned the rams or checked the reservoir fluid. Just operate the switch and get mad if it didn't work... and blame it on the car! We'd get the top working and then they'd come back complaining the header was leaking. Well? With the header bow rubber weatherstrip either burnt into brittle bacon or never having had pressure against it, why should it suddenly seal perfectly?
Now for the 1955 Caribbean convertible top. I hate to say it, but Orlon convertible tops WERE state-of-the-art by the late 1940s/early 1950s. Several car makers used the stuff and it was considered "modern." But the LIFE of a car back then was 75,000 to 100,000 miles OR less. And the life of a convertible top was 2 to 3 years...TOPS! And if you were constantly cycling the top up and down, not taking extra care to assist it folding, not using the boot, leaving the top lowered for extended periods, leaving the car parked out in the weather (top UP or DOWN) the top degraded faster and faster. They changed the top fabric for 1956 for a reason. But even the new stuff went bad... and the next generation technology tops that followed those degenerated too. That's eventually what fabrics do.
As for dyeing a convertible top inner face AFTER the top is made... wow. This is wayyyyy too late. How do you get even edges? How do you get even coloring? How do you not get dye on the seams? How do you prevent bleeding? How do you lay the fabric flat? How do you spray fabric with dye when said fabric is treated to repel moisture and the spray beads up rather than absorbs? All these are serious issues to consider.
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