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Hard Top or Soft Top for Winter?

O

orange150

Basic User
SOA Member
City
Fairfax
State
VA
To those of you that have had both, am I over thinking wanting a hard top for winter driving?
Long story short, I'm moving and am thinking about selling my full hard top as it's just one more (large) thing to move, BUT I am driving my Jeep more and more and would like to "comfortably" drive it in the winter as well.
I'm fairly certain I could sell the hardtop for damn near the same price as a new Besttop soft top, but would I regret it??
 
I say that depends alot on where you are moving to. Lots of snow, I would want a hard top. I would hate to come out in the morning and find 18" of snow on my soft top. That could be alot of weight up there.
One thing I would recommend if if not worried about modification is do the blower motor upgrade. If not familiar just search for Jeep CJ blower motor upgrade.
 
barrys said:
One thing I would recommend if if not worried about modification is do the blower motor upgrade. If not familiar just search for Jeep CJ blower motor upgrade.
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I'm actually in the middle of that right now. I pulled the heater assembly out to refurbish it and do the blower motor upgrade, but there's so much space back there with it gone that now I'm also redoing my dash wiring and gauges ... good ol snowball.

Moving to the northern VA area, so potentially more snow than I'm used to here in Raleigh.
 
If I lived up north, and I already had a good top, and a good place to store it, seems like a no brainier to keep it. :shrug:
 
I live in Georgia not a lot of snow here but I’m keeping my hardtop. (What else is going to keep the AC in)
 
Sell the hard top. Buy a soft top. Store it indoors for the winter and don't even let the thought cross your mind to drive it until spring. Jeeps don't like salt. Why expose it to such hell?

You could buy a winter vehicle. You could get one of those Chrysler things. What do they call them? Wranglers? Yeah that's it! ?
 
I live in a snowy area. Had a full hardtop- sold it for a soft top. Really wish I had kept the hard top. No used ones ever come up for sale here, a new one is about $2500 delivered.
 
Hard tops are nonexistent here, no real reason to have one anyway unless you have some serious ac. Scramblers are very rare also.
 
Randyzzz said:
I live in a snowy area. Had a full hardtop- sold it for a soft top. Really wish I had kept the hard top. No used ones ever come up for sale here, a new one is about $2500 delivered.
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Yea that's what I'm worried about.

And man I didn't even think about the salt!
 
Forget it, you're screwed. Park it as soon as the salt goes down and don't even consider driving it.

Sell the hard top, you can find one again if you move out of the salt.
 
Heck, in central Virginia, we didn’t even have snow last winter.
 
I also forgot to mention- my full hard top was a lot quieter than the full soft top. And I felt it was more secure, too. Also- if it’s cold and snowy, you won’t be opening the Zippers on the back of a soft top, so you really can’t even use the back. On a Bestop you have to unzip the back just to get to the tailgate latches to open the tailgate- then you can open the rear window. A hardtop is easy to open the back no matter what the weather.
 
When I was building mine I found a full hard top on Craig’s list for $800. I opted to stay with my hard top and bulkhead. I like the look but it really limits space inside in hindsight I should have bought it as now I’m dealing with where to put things that need to be out of the elements. Not to mention an additional seat would be nice to take our children with us
 
Alright, I'm going to keep the full hard top for now at least. I've gotta store the Jeep for a maximum of six months while I move and get settled anyway, so I'm going to keep the top on it while it hibernates.
 
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