Amy is thinking about changing tops...

Colorado is a lot like Arizona. We're on a lot of clay, so we would be a desert climate if it weren't for the mountains.

The elevation up here keeps the air very crisp. Its not like SoCal, Oklahoma, Kansas, etc. There is a noticeable difference in the air, the moment you get out of your car on a road trip, coming through here.

The car has a coat of epoxy primer under the top. When I did it, I sanded everything down to clean metal and epoxy primed the bare metal. If I take it off and notice any problems, I'll paint the top.

The car didn't have terrible rust on top, even though the top was vinyl to begin with and it came from a dealership in Englewood, Colorado. It lived outdoors most of its life and the red oxide primer was showing with an occasional spot of surface rust coming through and the typical joint rust at the quarters, which were media blasted, ground and coated with panel bonding epoxy to coat and fill most of the joint area, ground again and filled the rest of the way with Shark Bite, which even sticks to galvanized steel and allegedly, even sanded paint. The gutters were stripped and redone with a solvent based gloss finish hard bodied seam sealer.

A friend of mine has a '67 Sport Fury with a light metallic blue vinyl top and white paint. Its lived in a cold garage its entire life and came from a dealership in Lakewood, Colorado.

When we pulled the top to redo it, we didn't even have to remove all of the remaining adhesive, only grind it so the fuzz was gone and reapplied new adhesive.

Colorado doesn't trash tops much, if they are out of direct sunlight most of the time. We've got a crazy high UV index because of the thin atmosphere, so I use products that help UV protection and water shed that are not silicone based.

If I lived in SoCal or even some place that had a high humidity average, I'd reconsider the top idea.

But then again, I painted the car and put the top on, so if the top does happen to go to hell, $150 and $35 worth of adhesive in an afternoon isn't too harsh. This one has survived three years with absolutely no issues. No fading, cracking, peeling, bubbling, loss of gloss finish or rust.

If I had to pay someone every two or three years or if the car lived in the elements, I'd probably get annoyed with it, for sure.