The Visium Transparent Top is on! Really loving it already, very bright inside the cabin plus a very clear open view above. Happy about the quality, was a expecting a few glitches and imperfections since the tops are all handmade in Italy.... There's a word document the manufacture wrote-up indicating that each top is unique in that they're all made by hand by people who are passonate in making the top. I definitely can see the passion put into making and shipping. The top came shipped very professionally and and padded down well. Wash shipped in a 1/4" plywood box that was built good, it also had a canvas handle aid in carrying it. No instructions where in the box so that may bother some, I like the challenge and don't read them anyway so it wasn't a big deal. Upon opening it I unpacked a few items:
1) a Neoprene protective storage case - didn't know what to expect. Its very slim and it is like a wetsuit. There's a full zipper that opens up the 3 of the 4 sides. Pretty happy with it. There's no handles to hang it on the wall, just two light duty velcro straps. Don't know what that's for.... possibly for rolling and stowing the top in the closet when the top's in use.
2) a fine 8" x 13" shammy cloth. I used it to wipe down my finger-prints with window washing cleaner. I use the non-ammonia type.
3) a 16" x 28" very very soft towel. I believe this is for dusting and keeping the surface free from light particles of dirt when the top is semi-clean... i.e.: dusty. One thing is to really take good care of grit or anything that can scratch the top. I believe it could be polished out if it did get scratched, and buffed down clear.
4) two white cotton gloves - this is for handling the top when taking on/off the car. If you don't use these you'll end up getting oily fingerprints all over it which you'll have to clean off if you want it pristine.
5) about 6-8 ounces of some mystery milky fluid stuff thats in a plastic bottle - really don't know what its for, its not labeled. My hunch is that its some sort of conditioner/cleaner for the topside of the top.
6) a 5mm allen wrench twist wrench - was happy to see it was a quality tool. Its made by Lux-Tools which is German made:
LUX-Tools
Happy they didn't send me some cheap China L allen.
Unfortunately it only works for the front front allen screws on the top, the rear allens when assembling/dissembling the top the handle bumps the interior cabin walls. I used a 5mm socket allen mounted to a 3/8" drive with a 3" extension instead.
I inspected the top and didn't see any distortions, and any imperfection was minimal. I would and will inquire about getting another set or two of the door weather-strips. If they rip or stop sealing putting in a new set looks simple with some good RTV / silicone rubber.
The top is mounted by using the lower front dowl pin hole that's on the front top of the window. You can losen the allen that mounts the slide/down to the top. You don't have to take this off which I did initially. The down / front of the top can be dropped and slid forward into place to the top front window position. The rear is mounted by a clamp that hooks underneath of the rear dowl mounting points for the soft top. That bracket does need to come off completely. Possibly needs to be only loosened if the top has being taken off. Tip: Put a little grease or slimy lubricant on the allen screw mounting screws that the top uses secure the top. This makes your life way easier when installing/removing the top. When tightening down the allen screws be gentle, don't force them, treat the top as its glass. Get a good feel of the weather stripping compressing and feel when the top / body of the car is flush on the four corners of the top. Note that since its hand-made, some tops could have a rise above the car's body. I got most of mine out by pushing down on the top and compressing the car/top's weather stripping. So to summarize the steps of install:
1) Secure the dowls of the top into the front lower dowl location on the front window.
2) Secure the rear clamps down to pull the rear of the top down to the rollbar. Don't over-tighten!
3) One corner at a time, push down on the top of the top to compress the weather stripping, then tighten down the allen screw that holds the dowl mount.
4) Repeat step 3 for the other side.
5) There's a cover that covers up the rear clamps. Under this cover was a rubber spacer. It really didn't work, left a gap. I took that washer out and just mounted the cover directly to the top. No issue with clearance, screw mounted and secured, didn't hit anything so it wasn't an issue. Don't know what the idea was behind that.
Some observations:
1) The rear line of the top where it mounts to the Carbon Fiber rollbar cover is very close. I thought that was going to be an issue, but secured the top in the steps I indicated above and it wasn't an issue. The weather stripping compressed and moved the top forward. I wouldn't mind seeing 1/8" or slightly less taken off the back or possibly somehow a little less weather stripping forward of the top to allow it to take up some space to allow the gap, possibly the weather strip could be mounted a 1/8" back to give this gap. Took the roadster for a drive with the top making hill / bump transitions and didn't hear any odd creeps or groans so I don't think mine will be an issue.
2) The top amplify's sound. If you don't have the radio on it amplifies the road noise. Reason being there's no soft felt on the inside of the top to absorb the sound. The soft top soften's the road noise somewhat, the CF hard top has felt on the inside to absorb the sound vibrations. However when I played music my stereo sound very good! Reason being, it reflects and bounces the sound off the top. I noticed I had more bass and fully sound coming from my stock system. So I guess there's a balance there.
I have lots of pics that I can zip-up and share. I may just attach it to this forum. Putting only a couple pics up to show but not slow down the loading speeds of this thread.
I'm really happy with the top and it definitely looks and feels really good both inside and out.
If you're interested let me know so I can gather up a group discount. There was only this one top Mr. Fiat had, the rest will have to be ordered/shipped from Italy. I don't know how many they have in Italy but I can ask the lead-time to get it. The discount comes from having them shipped from Italy to the US, the more we can ship over in a batch the bigger the discount for us.
Any questions PM me.
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Trying to post pics, can't do it. I get an "x" in the upload gui. I ran into this a few weeks ago, don't know if its a TMC bug in the server. I used my mac, windows 7, android phone and no go on the pic uploads. Only way I got past it last week was to upload the pics to facebook first and point to the pics via the web URL upload method. Any clues what's going on there???
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