Club 80-90 Forums

Three of the hinges on my viking roof have mysteriously sheared off which has made the gas struts force the roof to one side. I think they've only just gone down to old age/fatigue.

I'm guessing new brackets will be a fabrication job as opposed to popping down to ECP? Anyone got any experience or contacts on how to get some new hinges sorted?

You can get replacement hinges here. Not the easiest things to replace - you need to fix them to the vehicle roof first, and then attach the pop top roof to the hinges. I did mine as part of a complete roof overhaul - a couple of the hinges had pulled out of the metal roof due to rust, so the roof had to come off to do a proper rust repair. This meant I had the canvas down and the reverse side of the pop top was accessible. I used rivnuts behind the fibreglass.

Thanks CJH, dropped an email over to them with a few queries. Certainly doesn't seem a simple fix which is a real pain and something I had way down on the 'to learn' list.

Did you bup the heavy duty hinges or the standard? I'm thinking standard for straight swap but would the van benefit from having the heavy duties?

When it comes to doing the job I take it its best to strip the whole canvas and roof off with a friend or 2 than to persevere bodging by myself.

I think I bought the heavy duty hinges, but in the end I didn't use them - my original hinges cleaned up nicely so I sold the new ones on to a forum member I think. If I hadn't heard about yours shearing I'd have said the standard ones are fine.

If you're dropping the canvas to get at the hinges, I don't think it all needs to come off - if you separate it from the pop top or from the van roof on the hinge side you'll probably make enough working room to get to the hinges. If you're taking the roof off for any other reason though it's definitely too heavy and too awkward to do by yourself. I did all the stripping down myself, but it took two of us to lift the roof down and to put it back on.

I replaced the canvas on mine while I was at it - thread here - I should have taken more photos while I was doing it.

Ah yes, that is a thread I've read many times and is very much of interest. Did you have provide Kingswood your old canvas? After living with the canvas for a couple of years any other improvements you might make?

I did provide my own canvas as a template, and I suspect that they probably kept a template, so maybe you wouldn't need to send yours in. Anecdotally though I've heard from a manufacturer of thermal poptop wraps that the Viking roofs vary too much between vans for him to do a 'stock' version - it's the only poptop roof that he insists on making 'made-to-measure'. So maybe the template made from mine wouldn't suit every other Viking roof out there. On the other hand, I can't imagine that the original manufacturer made every canvas differently - I suspect they were all made to a pattern and perhaps the variations in the finished dimensions came from variations in the way they were fastened to the fibreglass roof or riveted to the van roof.

I'm still delighted with the canvas, and I can't recommend Kingswood highly enough. If I was going through it again there are two things I'd consider. Firstly I'd ask Kingswood to pay particular attention to the 'length' of the canvas where it wraps around the two longitudinal aluminium bars. There's almost no stretch in the canvas, and mine was a touch too tight for my liking. Still, better that than loose and baggy. Secondly, if possible I'd delete the seam that runs along the horizontal aluminium bar above the windows. Where the seam touches the aluminium along that entire length it tends to wick water through the stitch holes. I've solved that with some seam sealer and by spacing the canvas away using foam pipe lagging, but that problem wouldn't exist at all if the canvas was made as a one-piece without that seam.