Hardtop - Need opinion

SirDoopYJ

SirDoopYJ

YJ Enthusiast
Supporting Member
Joined
Oct 2, 2020
Messages
755
Location
Stick Red, Louisiana
I have two hardtops. One that came with my 93 and one I recently bought with a parts 88 Jeep.

I would keep the 93 hardtop because it has the rear wiper, but it has cracking along the bottom. Not sure if it is fixable or if I am being to bothered by it.

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The 88 hartop is in better shape. It is rhinoed, but is is peeling off in places. No big deal. I would plan on removing it anyways and repaint it.

88 hartop:
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This leads me to my question. How often do you guys use the rear wiper? I was planning on swapping the rear doors and the plugin(if possible) and thus keeping the 88 hard top with the 93 rear wiper door. However, my Jeep does not have the correct harness and switches to even use the rear wiper, but if I were to plan on it later on, I would rather have the rear wiper.

If the rear wiper is not a big deal, I will save all trouble and keep the 88 hardtop as is and sell the 93 with the wiper door.

I would pretty much only use the hardtop during the cold wintery months.
 
My YJ came with a hardtop, wiper/washer only. No heater. Since it was my daily, I would get rained on quite a bit and the rear wiper was pretty handy for seeing out the back. I basically used it any time it rained. Similarly, I used the washer anytime it was dirty. I did not have the heater but I always wish I had that too, would have been useful on foggy mornings. Not what you asked, just chiming in extra info.

I'd probably choose whatever hardtop is in better shape, especially now that mine has been dedicated to nice weather only. Do you plan to see much rain with it? I would imagine louisiana winters won't need the wiper too much although sometimes it may be beneficial with the humid fogged windows in the mornings.
 
Hmmm. Does your 88 top have the dome light?

wondering if you'd be able to fish the 93 wiring/hose guts from that top into the 88? Haven't looked into that much. Probably don't need the wiper/washer but it would be nice to retain it if possible. Or maybe a body shop that knows how to work with fiberglass could fix up the 93 top for you?
 
Yea the 88 has a dome light and the same plug on the drivers side. I am sure the plugs are still wired differently because one has the wiper assembly.

My original idea was what you are suggesting with swapping the guts out.

Yeah, I wasn't sure if that is an easy fix. I am not familar with fiberglass.
 
If it's got the dome light then at least you know the wiring path is there. How tough that might be to fish the guts through, who knows. And you'd probably need to swap the glass over too because I believe the glass has the wiper and motor mounted to it. Recalling from memory here as I'm not home to look.

Also, I don't remember but the panel with the wiring plug might be riveted to the fiberglass? But yeah all the tops use the same big plug, they should be wired the same too, just missing the wiring for things they don't have. Like your 93 and my 94 are missing the heater wiring, but everything else is there. The dome wiring on the 88 should be in the same spot as the dome wiring on the 93, just the 93 has the extra stuff for wash/wipe. You could confirm by comparing your 93 to 88, seeing what wires are taken up in each one and even the colors might match.

that last paragraph basically comes from verifying the 95 service manual against my jeep. The service manual shows the whole plug populated, and mine matched it exactly except for the heater stuff mine doesn't support. I would think they did all the years the same way to keep it simple on their end.

They basically supplied all hardtop functions in the dash harness (red dangly plug next to the steering column included), then gave you the rear top/tail light harness that matched your top and functions. So if you had a soft top, you had no plug at the rear corner, if you have a hardtop dome only, a plug with only a few wires, a hardtop with dome/wipe/wash, a plug with medium amount of wires, and if you had heat/dome/wash/wipe, you had all the wires. The only difference in the rear harnesses being how many wires. they all go to some large plugs above the parking brake which is where the dash transfers everything to the top and tail lights. the boxy plugs at that connection on the rear harness side are either populated with more or less wires to carry what the dash supplies out to the top. The only difference in YJ dash harnesses being fog light support or no fogs, but they all support all top options. Confusing mess for sure.

I know nothing about fixing fiberglass personally but I have seen some people say "working on fiberglass is cake". Not sure how true or not true that is, but maybe worth a call to a few good shops.
 
So my harness under the dash should be good to go for the wiper assembly. I will just need to look for a rear harness that has the wiring for dome/wiper?

So not only do hardtops come with or without a wiper assembly, some come with a wiper/heater combo? I wonder if that too can be added in the future as well and I should just try to find a dome/wiper/heater harness.
 
Your dash harness supports everything, your rear top/tail light harness supports what your Jeep came with. So in your case, it would support dome/wipe, right? Isn't that what your 93 top contains?

Yeah, top of the line had the heater. I'm guessing saharas or something. Mine is an SE base model so sadly no heater. I always wanted to find the heated top and get the wiring and stuff but I never lucked out. Heated rear window is really really nice in cooler weather.

I also wanted to get fogs but I'd have to swap out the whole dash harness and find the rare engine lighting harness that actually contains fogs, which I was unable to find except one in really crappy condition. So I've given up on most of the factory upgrades.

I'm not sure how hard or easy it would be to add heated glass to the tops that came without it. I don't know if it's just a simple glass swap + running the wiring through the top, or not. There might be extra components inside the top to support it but I doubt it. The timed relays are under the dash by the parking brake, if you have the heated rear harness. You can see the red relay in the ebay pics usually.
 
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