In a couple of weeks it will be time to remove the hardtop from the Land Rover. (The first true sign of spring.) For the last few years this has involved gathering a crew to remove the top (video) and move it to wherever I could find to store it. If the ceiling of one’s garage is high enough, you can simple winch it up until it’s time to drop it back on in the fall. Insufficient head-room on my garage forced me to store the hardtop in a rental unit which worked fine until a tornado swept through Jefferson City.
After repairing the banged up hardtop I stored it in a basement room, a tedious and cumbersome process. So the next year we suspended the hardtop under the deck. Which worked fine but, again, took a half dozen people. What I really needed was a way to unbolt the hardtop, lift it up, and drive away. I needed a LRHR (Land Rover Hardtop Rack).
A local machine shop has constructed a simple steel frame and it should be ready in a couple of days. I found a good spot for it on our recently acquired acreage. While raking away old leaves and wood chips I discovered big cement slab that was part of a dog run 40 years ago.
It’s almost in the exact right spot and here’s the strange part: the hardtop rack will be seven feet wide and twelve feet long. The slab is 7’5″ wide and 25′ long.
The plan is to back the Land Rover up to the rack, unbolt the top, and back the truck under the frame. We’ll then use tie-down straps to suspend the top to the rack and ratchet it up off the body of the truck. We won’t be adding the hoop kit this year because I discovered I liked driving the truck topless.
UPDATE 4/26/22: The rack has been delivered and assembled. Still have to bolt the rack to the cement pad but the plan is to lift the top this weekend.
