Installation Time
(approx) 1 Hour
Difficulty Level:
Simple installation for anyone.
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Hey guys. So, today, we're checking out the TrailView Frameless Fastback Soft Top, fitting on 1997 to 2006 TJ Wranglers excluding the Unlimited models. So if you are looking for a replacement soft top or a soft top to switch over from your hardtop, this option is gonna be a great choice to take a look into. So if you have a factory soft top currently, and you are looking to replace not only the fabric, but you're also looking to replace some of that hardware that may be damaged or worn out over time, this is going to be a full replacement for that. Now, this will also be a great option for hardtop owners that are looking to switch over to a soft top, considering that it does come with everything that you need, including all of the frame systems and the hinges, the door surrounds, the tailgate bar, and all the hardware that you need in order to attach this soft top to the Jeep.Now, because this also comes with all the hardware, like I mentioned, this will also be a great option for any hardtop owners that are looking to switch over to a soft top in the summer months. Now what I do really like about this top is the fact that it's gonna give you some different functions and some different features than the factory soft top is able to allow. Now, this will keep that Sunrider feature where you'll be able to open it up in the front, giving you an open-air experience at the front two seats. But what I really liked about this is that you'll be able to unzipper and untuck the side windows and the back windows, resecure this hook into the body of the Jeep and run this as a bikini top. Now, this is gonna give you a couple of options and create an open-air driving experience if you're looking for a little bit more than what the factory soft top is able to allow. This will give you a little bit more coverage on the top while still getting that open-air experience. Now, what I will say is that this is not going to have the feature that is going to be completely convertible. So this will not fold all the way back, but again, this is going to give you that option for that bikini top feature. So it's kind of a trade-off, but if you're looking for something that's gonna give you kind of the best of both worlds, I think that this is definitely a great choice. Now, this is gonna be made of a 30-ounce sailcloth material. So it will have that black diamond vinyl look to it. However, it is going to be a little bit more heavy-duty and a little bit heavier than a vinyl material.So this is also going to help out with some sound dampening and some insulation inside your cab area, when you're running the heat or you're running the AC inside of your TJ. Not to mention this is gonna come up with tinted windows for a more aggressive look and it's also going to help out with that installation when it comes to keeping your cab area warmer or colder, depending on the month that you're in. And this is also going to come with that Fastback look, and that's going to be because we have no frame in the soft top itself. So instead of having that square back look like the factory one, this is gonna add a more aggressive touch and a Fastback look to the back of your Wrangler. Now, with all that being said, this is going to come in at roughly $800.And when you consider what comes with this package and what you're getting inside the box, I think that that's set at a pretty good price point. Now, in comparison to some other options, again, this is going to give you that option when it comes to functions with turning this into a bikini top, while still retaining that Sunrider feature. This is also going to be a little bit more heavyweight than some of their choices. Like I mentioned, this is made of sailcloth as to where some of their options may be made of a black diamond vinyl material, which will usually come in at about 28 ounces. Now that's not a big difference, but it's definitely something to take a look at when you are shopping around for soft tops. Not to mention again, this is going to come with that Fastback look, you'll see other options available on the page with the square back.So it kind of comes down to your personal preference in the function and the overall look of the top that you wanna go with. But in my personal opinion, I think if you're looking for a complete top that comes with all the hardware, you're looking for some options when it comes to your open-air driving experience, and you're also looking for a more heavyweight material, then this is gonna be right up your alley. Now, when it comes to install, I'm gonna give this a one out of three wrenches on the difficulty meter, taking you about an hour to get done with some very basic hand tools. There are a lot of steps in this install, however, they are very easy to do. So speaking of that install, let's jump into that now. The tools that I use for this install were an impact wrench, a 13 and 10-millimeter wrench, a 10-millimeter and 14-millimeter socket, a couple of screwdrivers, Phillips head screwdriver, a drill, and a Phillips head bit.So to kick off this install, we need to take off the factory top. Now, as you can see, our TJ does have a factory soft top. So I'm gonna be showing you the process of taking off the factory soft top. However, if you have a hardtop, it may be a little bit different. So our first step of taking off our soft top is to take off our windows. We're gonna start with the side and then we'll move around to the back. So if you have a factory soft top, you may be familiar with the process of taking off the back windows. But over on the side, underneath this Velcro flap here, we're gonna have our zipper. We can go ahead and unzipper it not only on the side but on the top as well.And then once this is unzippered, we can kind of pull that top zipper out and pull the plastic tabs from the factory door surround and the belt rail retainer. Then we can repeat that process on the other side. Now with our tailgate open, we can go ahead and remove our rear window. This is gonna be held in by a tailgate bar and a double zipper. So you're gonna be starting over at the right-hand side, and then we're going to zip to the left-hand side. Pull that back window out, and then you'll be able to untuck your tailgate bar and those two plastic tabs out of the belt rail retainer. Next, in the back of our soft top, we're gonna start to remove the fabric from our frame here. So this is held on by some buttons. So all we have to do is just pull down and disconnect those from the back part of our frame here.Next, we can disconnect the fabric from the center part of the frame. This is gonna be some Velcro. All right. What we can do at this point is unhook our header. What we can do at this point is untuck the tabs that are on the fabric that are connected inside the door surround, and then we'll be able to put our soft top all the way back just by essentially holding it backwards. And then we can start to fold it all the way back. Next, we can disconnect the frame arms from the brackets that are on our sports bar here. Now, these may be different when it comes to the hardware. We have replaced our hardware. So I'm gonna be using a 10-millimeter socket and a 10-millimeter wrench. However, you should be using a Torx socket in order to take these off if you have the factory hardware.Then we can repeat that on the other side. So with the tailgate open at this point, I would recommend to grab a friend. Now that the frame system is disconnected from the TJ, what we can do is just lift this up and pull the soft top off. Our next step is to take off our door surrounds. So these are just held in by knobs up at the top that we have to unscrew. We can just unscrew these by hand and then we should be able to pop them off.Once those are both off, we can just lift up and pull back, and we can repeat that for the other side. Last but not least, we can take off our tailgate bar retainers. These are gonna be on each side of our tailgate. I'm gonna be using a 10-millimeter socket to take those off. All right. I can just pop this off. Same for the other side. So now that our factory top is off, what we're gonna do is start by assembling our door surrounds. Now I'm gonna do this on the table. It's a little bit easier instead of going over to the Jeep and doing it there. So I'm gonna assemble one at a time, and then we can head over to the Jeep and install them. Now for this, you're gonna need these small screws as your hardware, and you're also gonna need a Phillips head screwdriver.So this main metal portion is gonna be the top part of our door surround. And very similar to our factory door surround, we're gonna have clamps that will screw onto this new main part of our door surround that will attach the door surround to the roll bar with. We are going to put that aside just for a second because we're going to assemble this portion first. So I'm gonna flip this back and make sure that this corner piece is tucked all the way in. Then what we can do now that that's in there is pop on our rear clamp, and we can start to spread that on and secure it down.So, I'd recommend to get them started. We're also gonna have a couple of points on the bottom. We can flip that over, get those started as well. You wanna make sure that all of your screws are in before you tighten anything down. So I recommend that you start them by hand. If you have a drill or a power tool with a Phillips head bit that you'd like to continue to secure them down with, you can, but you can also just continue to use the Phillips head screwdriver. However, you may have to put a little bit of muscle into it. I just recommend with a drill that you go slow.So now because this front plastic piece is already here, we don't have to really do anything at this front clamp besides secure it down and this is gonna be the same process. Next, we can take the larger bottom part of our door surround and insert that into the spot that needs to go on our corner piece here. We can use two screws to secure that down, just like we did with the clamps on the upper part of our door surround.So after one side is complete, we can repeat that same process for the other side, and then we can head over to the Jeep. What we can do at this point is install our door surround. So we're gonna align the pin with our top rail retainer. We're also gonna align this insert up at the front, and that will align the clamps with the holes in the sports bar. Now, what we can do is take our provided knobs and the plate. This is gonna be our hinge plate to allow the front of our top to hinge open. This needs to be sandwiched in between our door surround and the provided knob. So this is gonna go through the hinge plate, through our sports bar, and secure down on the other side to the welded nut on the door surround.So we are gonna get these as tight as possible. All right. So on the driver side only, we're gonna have this little strap here. This is just going to secure the bars. So when the top is open, make sure that it's not flapping around. So we're gonna have some provided hardware with this. It's gonna be a bolt and a flat washer, and then we're gonna have a flat washer and a nylon lock nut for the other side.Once that's on there, we can tighten it up with a 14-millimeter socket per bolt head side, and a 13-millimeter wrench for the nut side. Then we can repeat this same process minus a little strap over on the passenger side. So above our windshield visors here, this is where our original clamp was. Now we're going to attach our clamp to the body here instead of having this on our soft top. So with this, you're going to have the clamp portion, you're also going to have a welded nut plate, and you're also going to have a Phillips head screw. So what we're gonna do with this is take this nut plate and insert this into the body of the TJ, and then we'll be able to tighten this up using a Phillips head screwdriver.So now that the clamp is tightened down, you just wanna make sure that this portion of the clamp, which we'll be able to adjust in a minute. This is going to face forward and this will attach to the header. And then once we clamp it down, that's going to move that clamp down. And that will eventually seal the soft top to the windshield here. So at this point, now we can repeat that process on the other side, and then we can install our fabric onto our frame. So now that we have our clamps in place, what we need to do is attach our frame system to our fabric. Now this is gonna be the top fabric that's going to cover the top portion of our TJ. We're gonna leave our windows alone for just a second and focus on this.So essentially, this is already gonna be pretty much built out for us. This is gonna have the header attached and some of the frame system, as you can see here, we have a couple arms. Those are gonna be attached to the bracket that we installed with the doors surround. So those are gonna be the hinge brackets, and it's essentially going to allow the top or the front of the top to hinge back, giving you that Sunrider feature. So in order to attach this, we're gonna have plastic tabs like we would on the bottom of our windows, especially on the factory top. Now this is going to be that hardtop that's going to just essentially go into it the channel that's provided here, you'll see it right on the front here. That is the channel that we're gonna put the tab into. And then we're gonna have some Velcro that's going to secure the middle. So really everything is going to stay in place once it's secured.So I wanna start with the top and we're going to insert this plastic portion in our header and just make sure that it's tucked in all the way. Then we can move to the Velcro in the middle. Just make sure this top part stays in place as best as possible. Then we can also tuck it in on the sides. Now with the help of a friend, what we can do is take the fabric and the frame, and we can lay it over the windshield face down.Now that the top is on the Jeep, what we can do is secure our frame down. As I mentioned, we're gonna have the little arms here. They're going to allow the Sunrider feature to be flipped open, but we need to secure them to these hinge brackets. Now, you are gonna be provided with an Allen bolt, and you're also gonna be provided with a nylon lock nut. Now, these are gonna be secured down with the provided 3-millimeter Allen key. So we're gonna line this up. As best as we can, we're gonna straighten it out. So this piece of plastic is also going to have a captured opening that's going to hold that nut still while we tighten it up.Now you don't want to completely tighten it up. You do wanna make sure that it's not wiggling horizontally, but you still want enough wiggle room where this is going to open up with a fluid motion. And we can do the same thing for the back. Then we can repeat that on the other side.So now that we have both of our hinges attached, what we can do is take the rest of the fabric and we can push it over the rear portion of our roll bar, kind of straighten everything out. There's going to be Velcro over at the side on the door surround. So we can kind of Velcro that in the meantime, But we want to make sure that this is sitting over our back roll bar portion. So in the middle, we're gonna have two straps. These are gonna go around our sports bar here. If you have a sound bar, they're gonna go in between these sports bar and our sound bar. Then there's gonna be a buckle on the front. We're going to send our straps through, and down, and then we can tighten that up. Through and down through the buckle. And we can give it a good tighten and do the same thing for the other one.So, at this point, what we're gonna do is secure the back straps. Now, there's going to be two on either side, and they're gonna go in the inside of our top rail retainer. So each one have a buckle, and they're also going to have some Velcro here. So what I'm gonna do is secure this into the top rail retainer, lift this little mechanism here, pull down as tight as I can, and then we can resecure this Velcro. Then we can do the same thing for the back strap. Then we can repeat that on the other side.So at this point in time, what you can do is keep the top just how it is. If you don't want to install the rear windows, if you would like to run this as a bikini top, you can definitely do so. Just wanna make sure that you clamp at the front two clamps to the header, and you'll be all good to go. Now, I am gonna show you how to put on the back windows, but I just wanted to show you one of the cool features of this top. The fact that you can install it just how I showed you and run this as a bikini top. However, I'm going to unstrap these two back ones, just so we can get to the zippers on either side so we can install our rear windows.So what I did was just folded the top portion of our fabric back. There's gonna be two different pieces here. As you can tell, there's gonna be some attachment points on the underside of the fabric, and then this top layer of the fabric, you can just push back so you can attach your windows. So, first, what we can do is place that zipper in there and get it about halfway started. What I like to do is get the zipper started, then we can start to tuck it in the door surround. Because this is new fabric, sometimes it is a little bit difficult to stretch the fabric, especially if it is colder outside.So we can just start to push the top into the door surround. So we can just start to tuck this into the door surround. There's a little channel that you can tuck it into. And then I'm also gonna start it down at the bottom. Now, this is gonna allow us to have a starting point on each of the tabs, as well as the zipper. So we can just go back up to the zipper and we can secure that fully.So, now that this window is on, we can repeat the same process on the other side and then head to our back window. So before we can install our back window, we do need to install our tailgate bar retainers. Now, this is going to allow the tailgate bar that seals the tailgate to our back window to mount. So I'm gonna be using our factory hardware just because we have different hardware on the body of our Jeep. However, you will be using the hardware out of the kit. I'm going to tighten this up with 10-millimeter socket. And again, this will vary depending on what hardware you have in your Jeep and what hardware is going to fit with this tailgate bar retainer. You wanna make sure that it's level, and then we can repeat that on the other side.So now that we have our back window in hand, what we can do is attach our rear window to the Velcro here. Now we're not going to secure it down or really put the buckles in right now. We wanna get both sides of our windows zipped together, and then we can start securing everything down. So that's gonna kind of stay in place with the Velcro, but on either side of our window here, we're going to have a zipper. What we can do is zipper this, or at least get it started on one side, and then we can go to the other side. So because this fabric, the vinyl is brand new, right out of the box, it's not going to do a whole lot of stretching. So what I do recommend to do if you are having a problem, especially here, or fitting the last pieces together, I would take it out in 75-plus degree weather and just kind of let it sit in the sun, that'll help the vinyl stretch. So now that we're on the other side, what we're gonna do is secure the back window over here. Again, this may be a little bit difficult at first, especially if the fabric is brand new like it should be, but what we're gonna do is just do our best to get the zipper down over the roll bar. And it might be helpful to take out the bottom of the window. We can stretch that over the roll bar, but getting this zipper down is probably going to be easiest with the belt rail retainer.So if you did take most of this plastic tab out of the belt rail retainer, what we can do is just put that back in now, and that's going to stretch the fabric. Might take a little bit of pressure. So you wanna make sure that it's all the way tucked in just like we did before around this corner, and then we can tuck this final piece, and then make sure that is done on the other side. And then we can get our tailgate bar on here as well. What we can do now is secure the top of our rear window. We're gonna take these straps that are on the back of the rear window, and we're going to hook them through the buckles on the top of our soft top. So these are just going to strap in. We're gonna have two more, one in the middle and one on the far passenger side.What we can do at this point is grab our tailgate bar and we can slide it into the rail here. And there's gonna be a small seat channel, maybe a little bit difficult to see at first, but I'll show you in just a minute. But this is gonna go in this seat channel of our tailgate bar.So now that our tailgate bar is slipped into place, what we can do is click it into our tailgate bar retainer. As you can see, there's going to be a slot where this plastic piece is going to insert. So what you wanna do is pull towards you and kind of make sure that the tailgate bar is level, and then you can push it into place. So if we roll it down, push it forward, it should pop into these retainers. Then we can take this little plastic tab and tuck that into the belt rail as well. You also just want to make sure in the corner that it's completely zippered and that back piece is tucked in. We can make sure the Velcro is tucked in, and then we can pull the top part of our fabric down and secure it to the back of our Jeep. So now that we're done with the tailgate bar retainer, we can fold this top piece of material down. We can take this rope that wasn't originally hooked on the inside and we're going to hook it on the outside of our top rail retainer. This is gonna make sure that the top seals the windows and that nothing is gonna get inside of the back of the Jeep. So what we can do is make sure the bottom is hooked, lift up on that lever, give it a good tighten, and secure that Velcro down. Then we can do that same thing on the other side.Next, on our door surround, what we can do is clean this area with the provided alcohol pad. And what we're gonna do once that dries is put a seal on the outside. And this is just going to make sure that the door seals to the door surround. This is also gonna be attached by 3M tape, so we're just gonna peel back that backing.So once that's finished over here, we can repeat that same process on the other side. So our last step is gonna include clamping the front of our soft top down. This is going to use the clamps that we installed earlier. So what we're gonna do is pull down on our soft top, clamp that top, or put the hook on the part of the header that you see right on this plastic piece, and then what we can do is just pull this clamp back and make sure that it's sealed. We can do the same thing on the other side, and then we'll be all good to go.So that's going to wrap it up for my review and install. Make sure you like and subscribe for more videos and products just like this, and always keep it right here at extremeterrain.com.
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Features, Description, Reviews, Q&A, Specs & Installation
Additional Protection and Style. Improve your Jeep Wrangler TJ’s setup even further by installing the Black Diamond TrailView Frameless Fastback Top. With this upgrade, your Jeep will gain an extra layer of interior protection, shielding the cab from harsh sunlight, rain, and other outdoor elements. The top is also made from a superior quality material that’s engineered to ensure maximum durability and quieter rides. Plus, it flaunts a sleek and aerodynamic design that complements your Jeep’s rugged good looks.
Impressive Fastback Top. This accessory features heavy-duty molded tooth zippers, tinted windows, and a rain-tight rear curtain. Thanks to these components, you can rest assured that your Jeep’s cab is protected from rain and flying trail debris. What’s more, the top’s windows are completely removable, allowing you to convert it into a full-blown safari top in minutes.
High-Quality Jeep Top. The TrailView Frameless Fastback Top is crated from premium fabric, so it won’t be so easily damaged even when it’s constantly exposed to rough driving environments. Plus, it comes in a black diamond color to give it a sleek and aggressive appearance.
Easy to Install. This Frameless Fastback top is designed to install over the Jeep’s OE factory roll bar, making it easy to install. It also comes with all its necessary mounting hardware, so you can complete the installation in no more than an hour.
Application. The Black Diamond TrailView Frameless Fast Back Top fits 1997-2006 Jeep Wrangler JT models, excluding Unlimited.
Installation Note.This soft top should be installed at a temperature of 72°F since the fabric may contract an inch or more at colder temperatures. The top will contract and wrinkle during shipping, but have no fear. A few days after installation, the fabric should look fine.CA Residents: WARNING: Cancer and Reproductive Harm - www.P65Warnings.ca.gov
Installation Info
Installation Time
(approx) 1 Hour
Difficulty Level:
Simple installation for anyone.
What's in the Box
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