HoustonCgrBkr

I checked their site and it says no available. Are you shipping them the cylinders first?

Makoto0406

I had to call them. They wanted me to ship my cylinders first, but I can't do that since it's my daily driver. They did a great job working with me and were able to scrounge up a couple to send me (those may have been the only ones they had). I paid a $500 refundable core charge and another $50 to expedite.

I'm not sure what your time table is but I should have mine out next weekend (if all goes well). So CH should get mine back the following wed or so

M

HoustonCgrBkr

Thanks. I will call them and ask. It is not a daily driver, but I just wanted to get it all done at once.

Makoto0406

I just did the exchange took 3hrs all told. I would have been done in 2ish but it was very hot and my helper bailed on me. I’ll post some pictures but you can save a ton of time and likely some flesh by removing the back seat side speaker. The front 13mm piston nut is right there. The "c clamp" goes on way easier if you jiggle the top a bit.

also don’t leave your glasses on the top when you open it

M

Mike Murphy

I never felt the need to remove the speaker. What year is your car?

Makoto0406

2000 C4. I didn't try the other way since when I removed the speaker the nut was right there. Took maybe 30 sec. It was also nice as I could shine a light from the bottom which made it easier to catch the potentiometer

M

Makoto0406

Here are a couple pics for those who are interested


Speaker off. The piston is covered by a removable plastic piece

The cover comes right out and you can see the piston shaft



The nut is just off the speaker hole. 30 seconds with the wrench and your done

Make sure you put the piston in the guide hole on the right and capture the potentiameter on the left.

Hope this helps
M

HoustonCgrBkr

Thanks for posting those pictures.

Makoto0406

My cores are all boxed up and will be sent back tomorrow. I’ll let you know how the refund goes

M

HoustonCgrBkr

Thanks.it was too hot in Texas over the weekend for me to try. I may give it a go this weekend. Keep us posted.

dougpace

Been about a year since my earlier post up in this thread asking for thoughts on this. I ended up sending off my actuators to Craig, per fitman's recommendation. Got it done in June of last year, and they've worked like new since. Not an easy choice - I've gotten more cheap over the years, so I wasn't excited about throwing $400 toward something I might be able to do myself. But there's enough reports of pain in the rebuild (and my suspicion that Craig would still do a much better job than I could ever do on my first go-round), that I decided to put in someone else's hands. Glad I did! Good luck to everyone else with whatever route they choose, and much thanks to all the helpful posts on this thread with tips on how to get those things out (that removing the speaker bit would have been helpful for me - that bolt is tough to get to).
s

Mpfaff

Sent mine to Craig also.He actually removes the. ‘Eye” off of the shaft and replaces the seal with a better version.There are a lot of hack fixes out there be careful.

Dana Whicker

A couple of weeks ago I barely got my top up before a deluge rained down from the sky. I just sent mine to Craig today. Will report back.

Dana Whicker

Craig rebuilt my cylinders and got them back to me very quickly. It would have been less than a week if it wasn’t for a screw up by the USPS. I highly recommend his service. I started to try to rebuild them myself but I quickly realized it was a bit out of my comfort zone and just decided to let someone do it who has done it a ton of times.

He gave me a couple of tips that helped me out quite a bit. There is a sensor arm on the driver’s side. The plastic wrapped peg that slides in the guide channel goes through this arm as well. It tells the computer what position the top is in. When I was removing my cylinders, I didn’t see the arm nor was I aware of it. It seems like it’s made of plastic and if you kinda wrestle the cylinder out you could break it I would think. Luckily mine was intact.

The other tip he gave was just stick the hose ends of each cylinder down in a container of fluid and slide them back and forth a few times. You will hear all kinds of tricks about how to prime the system, but this simple method worked fine for me.

I’ll share a tip about something I ran into. When you are reassembling everything, if you bolt the hose ends to the hydraulic pump before attaching the top control arms don’t fully tighten the bolts until you get the arms and clips back on. The position of the peg on the cylinder has to be just right to slide the arms back over both pegs, and leaving those bolts just a bit loose makes it much easier to move and wiggle things around. I found out the hard way.

Hope this helps.

Notacoverband

Sorry to revive an old thread but can the top be shut with the rams off? Want to send mine out to Craig but no garage to store it in in the meantime. Thanks!