Over the last several days, I stapled the chicken wire over the roof opening. I got it mostly attached with old-fashioned staples, the kind you hammer in, but the roof wood is very hard and many of the staples got bent over as I tried to hammer them in. Then I remembered that we had a small, cheap air nailer that also took staples. Its staples were pretty light-weight, and I thought that they would just get smashed flat. But it turned out that the stapler drove them in perfectly. So I pulled out most of the old-style staples and re-did the job with the air stapler, which was about ten times faster than using a hammer.
The wire mesh looks really good; it’s smoothly and evenly stretched across the roof. Once I get the roof area almost ready for its final paint I’ll put the padding and vinyl on. It’s best to install it before painting, because the vinyl gets attached with zillions of carpet tacks, and there’s a lot of hammering involved.
I also repaired the trim rail that goes across the body just under the windshield. It is attached to the body with a bunch of caged nuts that are spot-welded to it, and several of them got destroyed when I took it off the car two or three years ago. A few months ago I had removed the mangled remains of the old nets, and this week I got some replacment caged nuts and tack-welded them in place.