Canvas Top - Convertible Top - Which products to use?

[Mike Phillips]

Canvas Top - Convertible Top - Which products to use?


Here's Meguiar's products for cleaning and protecting canvas convertible tops... While these two products are currently only available in our Marine line, you can still use them on automotive convertible fabric tops. Meguiar's actually worked with the Haartz company to develop these formulas.

Canvas Cleaner
Canvas Protectant





Questions?
What are you working on? As in what kind of car? How new?

A lot of older cars had a vinyl material for their top, most newer cars have a acrylic fiber material we generically refer to as canvas.

Meguiar's offers a cleaner and a protectant for convertible tops and actually worked with the Haartz company to develop these formulas. Because this is a cloth type material, you always have to be very careful whenever you're working on the top so that you don't agitate and thus fray the fibers. Soft brushes used gently will work fine, just don't get to aggressive and scrub real hard while cleaning.

After cleaning and the top is completely dry, or if you're top doesn't need to be cleaned, you can apply a protectant to help preserve the top material.

While these two products are currently only available in our Marine line, you can still use them on automotive convertible fabric tops.


Related threads...

Here's a thread that talks about convertible tops and our cleaner and protectant.

Haartz - Convertible Tops? How to clean and protect?

Detailing a PT Cruiser Convertible Top

Here's a link to the a boatload of information on convertible top materials...


A Restorer’s Guide
For Identification, Research and Replication of Automobile Top Materials


While the title is about restoration of tops, the page has links to just about everything you ever wanted to know about convertible tops both vintage and modern.


Cool picture after using our protectant from this thread...

Here's a picture of what M72 does for canvas tops.





And here's some good advice...

The most important thing to be wary of is to not scrub the convertible top aggressively or you can lift up some of the fibers and make it look fuzzy. The more this is done then overtime it looks worse and worse, so be gentle and careful when cleaning canvas tops.

It's best to use a very soft bristle brush like the body brush we use to sell as the bristles were very soft.

After washing the top and letting it completely dry so that it is desert dry, then you can apply a coating of our Canvas Protectant. This will refresh how it looks plus provide protection for the top material.

Also, if you do a search and copy and paste the below words into the word search box you'll pull up a plethora of threads on this topic.

Search Engine for this website

copy and paste these words,

M71 Canvas Cleaner



Hope this helps...

[Mike Phillips]

Re: Canvas Top - Convertible Top - Which products to use?

The above post deals with canvas or a cloth type material. With many older convertibles the material used to make the top is Vinyl which you want to protect using different products other than the M71 which is for canvas or cloth type materials.

Here's an example of restoring a neglected vinyl convertible top take from this extreme makeover we did here at Meguiar's Corporate office.

1966 Rambler Extreme Makeover - April 24th Open Garage Pictures & Comments


Products used...
Canvas Cleaner - To clean the vinyl material
M4016 Vinyl & Rubber Cleaner/Conditioner - To protect the vinyl instead of the M7221 Canvas Protectant.


You could also use a dedicated vinyl cleaner we offer in our Professional Line. At the time we did this extreme makeover we were out of the M39 which is what we would have normally used since we believe it's important to use products form the appropriate line because sometimes the differences in products is dramatic and you could get into trouble using a Marine line compound on an automotive finish. Just wanted to add this because we did use the Marine Line Canvas cleaner to clean vinyl which is perfectly safe and acceptable.

M3916 Heavy Duty Vinyl Cleaner


The first thing we did was to clean the Vinyl Convertible Top. Since we're not supposed to wash cars here we're going to use the Clean & Blot method to clean this convertible top. In most cases washing with free flowing water is a more thorough way to remove the loosened dirt and grime because with flowing water it can flow off the top, with the blotting and wiping method you're basically trying to wipe off any loosened dirt.

Note the cleaning results you see in these pictures are after the first cleaning, we went back over the top a second time and switched to clean dry towels to absorb and remove the dirty residue in the cleaning solution.

Before
















Here we're spraying on M7116 Canvas Cleaner








If you look to the right hand side of the top you can see the same clean spot



Mike and Shawn attack the top






Remember, this is just the first pass, the next pass got it even cleaner




After







Remember...

Match the product to the surface you're working on
Use good technique

[seth1066]

Re: Canvas Top - Convertible Top - Which products to use?

Canvas Top - Convertible Top - Which products to use?


Here's Meguiar's products for cleaning and protecting canvas convertible tops... While these two products are currently only available in our Marine line, you can still use them on automotive convertible fabric tops. Meguiar's actually worked with the Haartz company to develop these formulas.

Canvas Cleaner
Canvas Protectant





Questions?
What are you working on? As in what kind of car? How new?

A lot of older cars had a vinyl material for their top, most newer cars have a acrylic fiber material we generically refer to as canvas.

Meguiar's offers a cleaner and a protectant for convertible tops and actually worked with the Haartz company to develop these formulas. Because this is a cloth type material, you always have to be very careful whenever you're working on the top so that you don't agitate and thus fray the fibers. Soft brushes used gently will work fine, just don't get to aggressive and scrub real hard while cleaning.

After cleaning and the top is completely dry, or if you're top doesn't need to be cleaned, you can apply a protectant to help preserve the top material.

While these two products are currently only available in our Marine line, you can still use them on automotive convertible fabric tops.


Related threads...

Here's a thread that talks about convertible tops and our cleaner and protectant.

Haartz - Convertible Tops? How to clean and protect?

Detailing a PT Cruiser Convertible Top

Here's a link to the a boatload of information on convertible top materials...


A Restorer’s Guide
For Identification, Research and Replication of Automobile Top Materials


While the title is about restoration of tops, the page has links to just about everything you ever wanted to know about convertible tops both vintage and modern.


Cool picture after using our protectant from this thread...

Here's a picture of what M72 does for canvas tops.





And here's some good advice...




Also, if you do a search and copy and paste the below words into the word search box you'll pull up a plethora of threads on this topic.

Search Engine for this website

copy and paste these words,

M71 Canvas Cleaner



Hope this helps...

Mike, will the M72 make (hopefully) a black Haartz Twillfast II top a little darker?