Bestop Full-Length Header Bikini (Safari Version) with Windshield Channel for Jeep - Black Diamond

Video Transcript for Bestop Full-Length Header Bikini Installation - 2015 Jeep Wrangler Unlimited

Shane: Hey everyone. Shane here with etrailer.com. Today I have a 2015 Jeep JL Wrangler Unlimited, and I want to walk through how to install the Bestop Bikini top and Windshield Channel. Now, if we think about our older Jeeps before they came out with the four doors. The two door hard tops we're heavy, but typically two people could take them off. With the four doors, the hard top comes up to about here.

So it's added about three foot onto it. So now when we take it off, typically you have to have three, sometimes even four people, because they are a little bit heavy.Once we take them off, we don't want to take them off and then come back home from a ride during the day and have to put it back on. Because then you got to find that many people to put it back on. What we want is, we want to take it off, leave it off for the summer. Be able to go out, but be able to stay out of the rain if it does rain.Well, that's where this comes in.

It's a full length bikini top, comes all the way back to the very back bar. It has straps, cinches down in the middle and along your frame bars up here in the front. It's going to be a black diamond 23 ounce. So it's going to be very thick, very durable. It's going to be mildew resistant, UV resistance.

We're not to worry about it fading or breaking down over time.And being 23 ounces, I used to have a '98 Sahara, and I had a soft top with it. And comparing this top to the soft top that I had on mine, this is much thicker. It's going to have industrial strength webbing inside of it. So what that means is with it being 23 ounces, having that webbing inside, it's going to greatly reduce the flapping effect you get when the vehicle's in motion. I remember with mine, even though it was soft top, in the summer it really didn't bother me that much, but when you don't want it to, you don't want it to.

Go down the road and that thing's flapping like this. This is really going to greatly reduce how much of that flapping you get.Now we're test this thing out. We're getting ready to get on the highway. For about a mile or so, I want to see how much this flaps with all the windows up and see how much wind we can hear coming in. Say, if it's raining out. I can hear a little bit over here in the sides. But again, summertime, when you just have the top on or just have this on, maybe your windows open, really, probably not worry too much about that. I'm going about 70 and you can see it's really not moving around too much. It seems like it's pretty taut. Overall, I think it's pretty quiet. We're going to do another test here in a minute. We're going to turn back around and go back to that exit again. But this time I'll roll the windows down and see what it does save. See if it makes a lot of noise or it'll get annoying.So We're going to get back on the highway again. This time we have all the windows down, I have a GoPro set on that side facing the top. So you can see what it looks like from the outside, how much it's moving around. This is about as close as we're going to get to having the doors off without actually taking them off. I want to see how much noise it makes with it like this. Obviously with the windows open or the doors off, it is going to flap around a little bit more, but it really is not as loud as the older ones used to be. It sounds a lot thicker, a lot more durable.Each side is going to be double stitched. So anywhere where a strap goes in, the double stitching is going to hold that strap in place. We're not going to have to worry about it breaking off or coming loose like a single stitch would. This is the first time that I put one of these on, but let's talk about some of the issues that I can see with it already.It'd be great to get us out of the sun, get us out of the rain directly on top of us. But if we look right up here by the front door, this is all open. Could rain get in there Yeah it might be able to, it's open, you might get some. But if we follow it back here to this back door, this is a very large gap. So I could stick my hand in here and you can see right through the glass. That means any water there runs here is going to run right down inside the door. There's one way to fix that. And that is to open your door, close it, and then cinch or strap that down over the top. The only thing with that is you won't be able to use the back doors unless you undo it. Other than the two areas up there that can potentially leak a little bit of water in.We have to think about this area back here. If we get stuck out in the rain somewhere. Bestop have a solution, and that is the Duster Deck Cover. It's going to be constructed of the same material, same thickness. And what it's going to do, it's going to attach up here, go right behind your seats and cover this whole area as well is up around your poles to prevent water from getting in the back here. All the plastic components, they're all going to be very durable, thick plastic. So when we go to cinch our straps down, we're not going to have to worry about those buckles breaking.The other thing I really like about this setup is that they're also going to have strap keepers. If you'd like to use them, you simply slide them on, get your strip put inside of it. We're going to slide it up like this. We'll take that strap, put it in. That's going to keep it from flapping around when we're driving down the road.Now, as far as in the fall, when we go to get our hard top back on, this top is very easy to take off as well as install. The windshield channel that runs across here, all it does is button onto the canopy top. So we can take the crossbar or the windshield channel. We can set it in the corner of our garage. We can take this, roll it up and it'll fit into a small sized box like this. We can take this either, put it in with our windshield channel or we can slide under the seat. So it's ready to go for the next time. Now I've gone ahead and unhooked my windshield channel so we can show it to you.This is actually a kit, but you can buy these separately. If you already have the channel and you're just replacing your top, you can find that here at etrailer or vice versa, if you're just wanting to replace your channel, you can find that here at etrailer. You can see how it goes in when you're ready to take it apart for the winter, you just unbuckle it like that. And your windshield channel will just slide out. This is going to be your channel, it's a durable construction. And this edge right here, what it does is, it seals right around that rubber seam there. So that's going to help prevent any water, give you a good seal up there at the front. And see this buckles on, and it's going to attach here where a factory buckle hooks on. It makes it very nice. There's not going to be any welding or drilling required to get this installed.As I mentioned, we're not only going to have some straps and buckles that run along the sides. We have some hook and loop fasteners that run around our frame bars here on each side. We also have buckles here in the center with hooks on them. Now that being said, this will have to be removed when we go to put our hard top back on. The reason is, is our hard top is going to utilize the holes where these straps are in order to cinch it down, to hold it down in place. For our front side, where one shield channel is, our T top for our hard top, actually buckle in right here to this factory attachment point. So this would have to be removed in order to get your hard top pre-installed.As far as my final thoughts on it, after taking it out, testing it on the highway. If I had a newer Jeep, 2010 or newer, I would most definitely get one. I think it's well worth it, how easy it is to put it on and take it off. So you're not having to fight with your hard top all the time or trying to find extra people to take it off and on. It gives you plenty of sun protection. It's quiet enough, even with the windows down, that you don't hear it like you do the older ones.So now that we've gone over some of the features, let's walk through how to get it installed. Start your installation. You need to take your header bar and your canopy and flip your canopy upside down. You need the button side on the same side as the header bar. And you'll notice the buttons here, they need to be facing up. This thin piece here needs to be facing towards the buttons on the canopy. What we're going to do is we need to install these brackets and they're going to fit right on each end, they come with the hardware. You need a Phillips screwdriver and a 3/8 wrench or socket, it'll go in just like this. And then we'll have a nylon lock nut that we'll put in each one of the four corners.Once you get one end, and you're going to repeat the process on the other end. You want to make sure that that rivet nut is facing towards the end of the canopy. You'll notice on the inner canopy, it's sewn in this corner. We're going to take the end of it, going to slide it in like that. Button these down, that'll hold it there. We're going to work our way down to the other end, and we're going to slide the other end in the same way. Make sure when you get to your bracket, you go underneath this lip here.Now we're going to take our canopy and our header bar, and we're going to place it on top. The header bar is going to go right up here, along this rubber seal, above our windshield. Going to get the canopy up there. It's not heavy at all, so pretty simple to get it up here. Then we're going to take that nut and we're going to push it like that. We want it to go back behind this bar. We're going to have a plate, it's going to look like this, and place it on. Now it looks like that. Let's just get this out of the way. This is what is going to hold the header bar down on that rubber seal. We don't need to overcrank it. We just want to make sure that we get it tight enough that we don't have any water that leaks in between our canopy and the seal here, to the inside. We'll do that same thing on the other side.Next, we're going to come to the center in between our two doors. We're going to have two straps like this, and get that centered. We're going to have one strap that's going to wrap around like this, the other one's going to wrap around like this. And you're going to have a buckle on one of these. We run our strap through the buckle and cinch it down. We'll do that same thing on the other side.On this back bar, you may have a flap here. You may have a bracket on here. There's two bolts that are holding that bracket in place. We're going to use one of them. I'm going to use the bottom one. If you don't have a hole here for these bolts, you're going to have to feel where they are, and you're going to have to cut a hole in this cover here. You're going to have a small strap like this with a grommet. Pull the bolts out, run it through the grommet and the strap. And then just re install it into that hole in there. See, there's two of them, I'm going into the bottom one.What I'm going to do is I'm going to go around the outside and going to get to the buckle on the new canopy. The reason I'm going outside. If we go inside with the strap, it's actually going to pull down like this. I want it to pull down like this and try and get as much of the top stretched out so we can get it as tight as possible. Like that. Repeat the same process on the other side.Next, you're going to have two straps look like this. They're going to have a hook on them. We're going to hook it right here, and run it right up to this buckle. Then we'll cinch that down. Repeat that same thing on the other side. And we're going to come back up to the front. On each side you're going to have a strap that's going to go around your bar with hook and loop fastener on it. Now, if you have a handle, you're just going to have to work it through there to get it to fit or remove the handles. This one back here. Get a little bit. Still allow you to use the handle there. Like that. You just repeat the process on the other side.Here in the center, we're going to have one more flap, it has two straps on it that hook around our soundbar. The hole where your hard top bolts together here, you're going to have a hook on your new strap. We're going to take that hook, feed in the hole and hook it on the edge. And then we'll cinch that down. Once you get everything secured down, you're ready to go. Walk around, make any adjustments that you may want to, to try and make it a little bit tighter. You're ready to go after that. That's a look at and installation on the Bestop Bikini top and Windshield Channel on a 2015 Jeep Wrangler unlimited..