Crown Vic Vinyl Top

Not if you don't care how it looks. I doubt you'll get the old roof off and wind up with paint and trim that doesn't look kind of crappy. Having a vinyl roof redone usually isn't very expensive and is probably cheaper then it would cost to clean up the roof and repaint it.

Thanks for the info. Painting would not be an issue because I'm planning to have the car repainted when the vinyl top comes off. In fact, taking off the vinyl top would be part of the painting job. My concern has more to do with what, if any, body work would have to be done to areas currently covered by the vinyl top. I heard somewhere years ago that portions of the roof are not "finished" body-wise when the car is ordered with a vinyl top.

That's not really an issue. If the car is going to be repainted, then the work that has to be done where the vinyl is going to be similar to where there is paint. Of course, you may have to do some extra steps, like prime it. However, I suspect that there has to be some sort of finish on it, even if it is missing a coat of paint or clearcoat or something. Plus the amount of work that needs to be done will have more to do with rust that is there now than how completely finished the roof was.

This was a 21 year old car. You're getting into antique territory with it. If you wish to make it into an antique, it might be worth fixing up right now, including a new vinyl top.

Jeff

If the car had a vinyl top the steel roof underneath will be painted so it won't rust, but I'll bet your suspicions are right and they didn't do a full job of filling in the seams and making it 'exposed ready' which would add more work. The vinyl top and the padding would hide all the imperfections.

Plus you'll have to fill in all the holes left when you take off the chrome edge trim surrounding the vinyl roof - unless you want it to look like a painted roof car with funny chrome trim around the roof...

Do it the simple way: Strip the roof, paint it, and put the vinyl top and the surround trim back on. Costs a bit for the vinyl, but I'm betting it's still cheaper than all the bodywork to fill and finish the seams and make all the trim go away permanently.

To go better than new, have an upholstery shop make the new vinyl top out of real convertible top fabric. Will cost more, but will probably live a lot longer before looking ratty or falling apart.

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Thanks again for your comments. I tend to agree that there might be some seam-filling, etc, to do.

By the way, I have no antique-restoration plans for this car. It is still my daily-use car. It has about 277,000 miles and still spins like a top. In fact, when it rolls over 300,000 miles I plan to call Ford Motor Company and invite them to send out a camera crew!

Vinyl roofs are fun to remove on Crown Vics !! :p I am currently restoring mine and we had to remove the ugly vinyl roof that was still in almost perfect shape..