THE GREAT COVER-UP

Topping off your Jeep for comfort and style
One of the truly great things about Jeeps is that they are the ultimate convertibles. Sure you can own a small sports car with a cloth top that goes up and down, but with a Jeep you get much more. Jeeps can be outfitted with hard tops, soft tops, cab tops, bikini tops or no tops at all. In addition to the type of top, you also have a lot of styles and options to choose from among these basic categories. Also, many products are available to complement all the top options — your ability to customize is almost unlimited.

The standard factory hard top is hard to beat when it comes to protection from the elements but is not very friendly when it comes to enjoying a summer breeze. The Targa top from Steel Horse provides shelter in the winter, but allows the front half to come off in warmer weather.

The old standard bikini top has gone one better with the safari style full coverage bikini from Bestop and Canyon Crawler. Each comes with a matching storage pouch.

Often overlooked but always a good idea is a tire cover. Your outside mounted spare tire takes a pounding from the sun and is usually unsightly after the first tire rotation. Why not cover it with a spare tire cover from Bestop or Canyon Crawler. Sizes up to 35-inch tires.

Both Bestop and Steelhorse offer Cab Tops for Jeep TJs. At press time, only Steel Horse offered owners of YJs the ability to run a true cab top on their rigs. (Seen in this photo).

Jeeps have long been thought of as versatile vehicles with cloth tops, perhaps this goes back to the early days of military Jeeps with OD canvas, but it is still a familiar look today. Here you see a Bestop Supertop with two-piece soft doors.

With factory steel half doors in short supply Steel Horse has introduced a fiberglass half door set for Jeeps.

Another Steel Horse exclusive product is their fiberglass half-door uppers. These uppers have slider windows and work with either the factory or Steel Horse half doors.

Jeep owners have the chance to upgrade to a sound dampening acoustic brief. This bikini type top should also offer some added insulation over a standard brief, when running soft doors and a tonneau boot in cooler weather.

Steel Horse has a Tonneau Boot that covers the back of your Jeep without having to remove the soft top bows.

Another advantage of the Tonneau Boot is that the center area opens with two zippers for easy access to the cargo area.

Covering up your Jeep means more than just a top for the vehicle, you can also cover your seats too. Here you see the new Steel Horse seat vest that provides not only a seat cover but also added storage.

Once you’ve parked your Jeep for the night, you can use a trail cover to keep the elements out of the cab area. Both Bestop and Steel Horse offer this product.

If you run a soft top, chances are you’ll want to take it off some time. To protect the canvas from harm, try storing it in a soft top storage bag from Steel Horse. Steel Horse also offers soft top window storage bags. Both Steel Horse and Bestop offer storage bags for hard doors and soft top half door uppers.

By adding a duster curtain to your bikini top and door combination you gain even more protection from the elements but retain the ability to strip down as the weather improves. This Bestop duster curtain has a panel that opens in the center so you can reach through to the bed to grab your gear or a cold drink.

A long time favorite is to run the factory steel half-door with a soft upper and a full soft top. Upgrades to this option are Bestop’s slider windows on the half-doors and tinted windows on the soft top. With slider windows, you get real glass, quick and easy opening for use at the drive-thru or tollbooth. The tinted window helps cut down on the heat when running a soft top in sunny weather.

Here you can see the Bestop slider window door open. It is a good compromise between a full soft upper and a factory full hard door.

A soft two-piece soft-door from Bestop allows you to remove the upper window section and run with a half-door or easily remove and store both halves in the back for a more open feel.

Take bikini tops as an example, you can outfit most Jeeps with a standard strap-type bikini top that covers just the driver and front passenger, use a strapless bikini for cleaner lines or throw on a full safari-type bikini to shade occupants in the rear seats too. The addition of a wind breaker curtain and a tonneau cover will give your Jeep a half-cab look, and help shelter you from the elements as well as keep items in the back cleaner and out of sight.

When it comes to full soft tops, your options are also quite broad. With a soft top you can run with the top up for full protection from the elements, roll up or remove back and side windows to increase air flow, or drop the top entirely for an open air ride. Some soft tops (Bestop) even offer you the ability to fold back just the front section while leaving the back of the top in place. Think of this as a soft sunroof. Hard tops too are available with removable front sections for that open-air feel, without the need to remove and store a bulky top.
No top is complete without doors to help seal out the elements. Here you can run factory full steel doors, the factory steel or aftermarket fiberglass half-doors with soft upper, or soft doors by themselves. The best soft doors are two-piece so that you can take off the upper half and run them as half doors in the summer. You can also get soft half doors for some applications. If you run steel half doors you can utilize uppers with zippered plastic windows or actual glass slider windows. With fabric doors, you can only run the zippered plastic windows on the upper half.

Speaking of windows, Bestop gives you the option of upgrading to tinted plastic windows or mesh screen windows in place of the standard clear plastic. To cover and protect your precious soft windows from your half door uppers or soft top, you can cover them for storage using soft zippered storage bags. Other items to top off your Jeep are tire covers, seat covers, even trail covers for when you put your rig to bed at night.

Take a look at some of the options we’ve pictured here. You’re sure to get a few ideas on how you want to top off your Jeep so that it has the personality and versatility you desire.

Read More: Jeep Tops | Tonneau Cover | Jeep Wrangler Parts | Bestop