Hi All,

I bought my Barchetta a couple of months ago. With the sale came a brand new mohair hood with fitting instructions and pictures for each stage, but its as long as a telephone book! . The hood thats on the car i have made a temp repair on the back window to get some extra time out of it. My local Fiat dealer wanted £350 to fit the hood.:bang:
Has anyone had a go themselves at fitting the new cloth...if so how did you get on? or know of any good companies that can do it cheaper than Fiat?

Cheers

These guys are in Kent, but I don't know anyone who's tried them. From what I can tell reading their website they supply and can arrange fitting.

http://www.carhoodsdirect.co.uk/catalogue.php?view=category&id=4

Contacted Carhoods direct and they will come out and remove old hood and fit my new hood (EuroTop) which i supplied as it came with the car. They are charging £195.00 inc Vat, which is loads better than Northgate Fiat in Ashford Kent who said it was a complicated, hard job and would charge me £350 plus Vat.

Be careful though if you are supplying the hood to be fitted as cheaper hoods are sometimes a very poor fit or do not fit at all but Euro Top is fine. But looking at Euro Hoods website their prices for Barchetta hoods are good.

It really naffs me off though when i see the cost of the zip up rear window around £140.00 plus vat for a bit of clear PVC with a zip round it. As barchetta rear windows don't last long they sting you.

Triumphshop.co.uk do a roll of the plastic rear window material for £26.00 if you ever need to make a reasonable repair to a split rear window.

Thanks for the advise hope Ive given some too

Nice one!! Let us know how the job goes... I was told it's a 4 hour job for someone who's had plenty of practice... so at £50 an hour that's not a bad price, especially as they're coming to you.

hi, i refitted the mohair hood, the only real bitch is getting the back bottom edge (below the screen) to come all the way around both sides. in the bottom corners there are these razor like plates to nestle into the seams. soooooo that means you have to pull realllllly hard on the bottom edge seam, progressively in order for it to reach around. in other respects its quite doable, but £200 sounds reasonable depending on your own time / ability / wonga ratio.

How is called this material? I've seen it on audi, opel, mercedez...

Because this material for my taste looks preetyer then the original barchetta hood...

Do you know anyone who made barchetta hoods with this material?

It's Mohair. The best for any hood.

http://www.carhoodsdirect.co.uk/catalogue.php?view=category&id=4

Click to expand...

I' ve looked this link and Black Vinyl looks more black and similar to this audi hood than the mohair... What is the different betwen the vinyl and mohair hood?

Is black vinyl darker then mohair black?

Materials used.

Vinyl (Plastic) Cheap
Leather (Obviously leather)
Mohair (A top quality leather) Expensive but you notice the difference

Trust me the Audi's do not use Vinyl .

http://cgi.ebay.de/Cabrioverdeck-Fi...049011968QQcategoryZ14769QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

what do you think? My german is bad

I bought a mohair hood from someone off ebay.de, did the transaction via the bank and received it within a week. Fitting it is fiddly but quite doable (its hard work on the fingers) but it does take patience.

I did mine over a week, letting each bit of glueing to fully set and harden before I went onto the next stage. I also did mine with the frame off the car, which seemed easier at the time, but in hindsight I am not so sure.

The hood has been on 2 years now, looks as good as new and hasnt cuased any problems at all.

Its worth having a go yourself, it wont rip unless you are a complete arse with it and therefore if you cant do it, you can give up!

Hi
Carhood direct are coming to fit a new Mohair soft top onto my 1999 Barchetta on the 24th Apr 2006.

I will let you know how it goes.

Doc Orange Peel

Well I've had my Eurotop hood fitted by Carhoods Direct. They had some trouble as it was a tight fit but managed in the end it looks great. For extra security on each side at the back they added a rivit which although shouldn't be there they look meant. Its as tight as a drum!

I fitted a new mohair hood to our barchetta on Monday. Wasn't to bad, the worst bit was cleaning up the araldite used by the last owner to keep the sides down just behind the door. We have had a hardtop on it since about October and the weather wwas looking good on monday so I took the plunge and removed the hardtop and the old vinyl hood.
Instead of messing about with contact adhesive on the front and rear I used very strong double sided tape used in the carpet and flooring trade, it worked wonderfully and allowed a certain amount of movement to get a good fit. Car looks wonderful now. In total including tea breaks and gouing out for the tape it took about 4 hours.

Update
My B is getting its new soft top tomorrow 24/04/2006 so i will let you know how it went and I will upload a few pics of it being fitted.

I will have a good condition soft top back window that I will be selling on eBay sometime next week. If you are in need of a replacment window you will know how much a replacment will cost !!!! (If Fiat can get you one that is.) So this is a chance to get your hands on one for a lot less.

Doc Orange Peel

Soft top went on without any problems at all today, Mohair is the way to go if your looking for a replacment.

Cost me £495 fitted onsite at my work.

http://www.carhoodsdirect.co.uk/catalogue.php?view=category&id=4

I would use Carhoodsdirect again, but if i had more time and it was my second car I would have given fitting the soft top myself a go.

Doc Orange Peel