Can a power top be raised manually?

I've been manually raising and lowering the top on my 1964 Valiant w/ power as I work on it. You can't just pull up on the header bow, rather you must first pull up the center "elbow" on each side and together, either two people or raise one a bit and prop it, then pull the other. Then you can pull it up by the top bow. Without the elbows up first, it is sort of locked.

New cylinders are available ~$220/pair I recall. I used a late 1990's Mustang pump-motor ($60 ebay). It looks identical to the 1964 (amazing how little conv tops have changed since 1930's), but wired differently. My 1964 motor has separate up and down coils, each flowing to the motor case (ground) and actuated separately directly by the switch. The later Mustang has a single coil where you reverse current direction for up or down, and no flow to ground. I installed two relays under the dash, which are actuated by the factory switch to reverse polarity. That keeps the high current off the valuable switch. Ford did the same, but put the relays at the motor. You could also do that, then your thick red and yellow wires from the dash would simply flow logic signals to the relays and would have to run another wire for 12 V supply.