Tesla Motors Club
I refused to remove the hard top until I had somewhere safe to store it... So I made one. I love PVC pipe and either one of my kids will gladly tell you that I do crazy things with it.
I started by putting hooks into the ceiling, making sure they went into the rafters, were square, and the overall dimensions were larger than the top. This was a real eye-opener for me. As you can see from the pics, I hang all kinds of stuff from my ceiling so I am very familiar with finding rafters. For some reason, the two rafters I chose were no where near the 24 inch centers that all of the others were at, so if you decide to do this, make sure you find the rafters (I used a stud finder, a tape measure, and a very thin drill bit) and put the hooks in before you do anything else:
Then, I measured the hooks and started cutting PVC. I tried to make the PVC fit as tightly as possible, so the frame would be held in place mostly by friction and gravity:
First I made sure that the top frame fit into the hooks I had made with only the four corners having connectors (note, I did not glue anything until I had cut all of the pieces cut, and connected and measure everything!) Then I cut out the sections where the cross members were going to go, carefully making sure that I wasn't changing the overall length of the original sides. As you can see, the section cut out is the outside diameter of the pipe:
Then I assembled (most) everything and tried it on for size:
Finally, I laid everything out and started gluing:
I made a cover for the top from an old soft blanket (folded, cut to size, then stitched up the two sides, leaving one side open) and a separate one for the headboard (or whatever it is called) so they won't touch and don't collect dust. I threw the screws and fittings into a zip-lock back into the cover with the headboard. Here is the final product ('scuze the garage - I am a pack-rat):
I started by putting hooks into the ceiling, making sure they went into the rafters, were square, and the overall dimensions were larger than the top. This was a real eye-opener for me. As you can see from the pics, I hang all kinds of stuff from my ceiling so I am very familiar with finding rafters. For some reason, the two rafters I chose were no where near the 24 inch centers that all of the others were at, so if you decide to do this, make sure you find the rafters (I used a stud finder, a tape measure, and a very thin drill bit) and put the hooks in before you do anything else:
Then, I measured the hooks and started cutting PVC. I tried to make the PVC fit as tightly as possible, so the frame would be held in place mostly by friction and gravity:
First I made sure that the top frame fit into the hooks I had made with only the four corners having connectors (note, I did not glue anything until I had cut all of the pieces cut, and connected and measure everything!) Then I cut out the sections where the cross members were going to go, carefully making sure that I wasn't changing the overall length of the original sides. As you can see, the section cut out is the outside diameter of the pipe:
Then I assembled (most) everything and tried it on for size:
Finally, I laid everything out and started gluing:
I made a cover for the top from an old soft blanket (folded, cut to size, then stitched up the two sides, leaving one side open) and a separate one for the headboard (or whatever it is called) so they won't touch and don't collect dust. I threw the screws and fittings into a zip-lock back into the cover with the headboard. Here is the final product ('scuze the garage - I am a pack-rat):