Boot Hinge Repaired

Hulk is looking even more forlorn

Wiper blades!!

The offending seam is at near the top outer hole

Complex, scary device

Latches

Some progress to report. The crisis with the boot hinge finally forced me to get serious about removing the hulk's hardtop, b/c you have to unscrew the hinge backing from under the tonneau. The only point of resistance removing the top was the driver's side latch just aft of the b-post. It was frozen (rusted) in place and I had broken the chrome handle off some time ago trying to rotate it and free the latch. I decided, to heck with it, and got the crowbar under it enough to fit the sawzall blade in there, which made short work of the offending latch. I rigged a three point strap under the top (don't forget to go on top of the t-bar) and lifted the top off cleanly with my front end loader. Out came the nasty softtop, chewed full of holes by the packrats. Now, at last, I have access to the whole interior.

I prepared to remove the drivers side hinge from the hulk's boot in order to swap it into the driver car. The geometry between the boot hinge and the tonneau hinge must be just right to allow removal. After fussing with it for awhile, I decided to remove the existing (bent) one from the driver car to get a better idea of how it all works. Long story short; after I successfully got the bent one out, I decided to try (again) bending it back into position and reinstalling it instead of swapping with the hulk's, which would probably not fit the same anyway. The hardest part was getting the whole assembly back into its proper mounting position. I could not get it to slide outboard against the front wall of the boot. I finally discovered that the hand-made holes in the wall had a slight seam that was preventing the hinge mount from seating. A little careful corrective metalwork fixed the problem and the whole thing went back together nicely. I also installed the tonneau latches from the hulk as the driver was missing them entirely.

Oh, and the wiper blades are on! I replaced the custom pin on the smaller "pantograph" arm with a simple roll pin, which seems to do the job.