Jesus, those are way worse than what I imagined as I read the thread title. If some cars have these marks and others don't, I'd be pissed at Porsche for telling me it's "typical."

 

It's got to be the fabric or the way it's dyed ... my wife's Mercedes CLK-500 convertible has a black fabric top, it's got 94k miles on it and no marks. My former 997 cab had 38k miles and looked awful. But my 993 with an aftermarket top looked much better after 40k miles of use.

My red top 991 has some wear at 8k miles.

 

I wanted to give an update on this situation. The dealership here in Cincinnati (Porsche of the Village) worked with PCNA and determined the problem on my car has to do with the contact between the underside of the Cab Top Lid and the fabric of the Cab Roof. They applied a very thin later of felt over the foam pad which normally contacts the roof. Then they tried to brush out the shiny marks - which worked better on one side than the other.

I am going to wash the car this weekend and then use Ragtop on it to see of I can get the roof marks to become even less visible.

I want to put in a good work for the Porsche of the Village and in particular the service manager, Bill Hutson. PCNA looked at the car months ago and was somewhat dismissive. Bill and dealership would not let it go and kept working on it until they determined the root cause and came up with their own fix. Bill said he is willing to discuss what they found out and if you want his contact info just PM me.

Rob

 

I used to get these on my 997tt cab, black top, and like the other poster mentioned it dissipated slightly over a few days with the top up. Really not much you can do with a soft top that has to be origami fit when down. I believe you are going to have to live with it or treat it every time you put the top back up.

 

Nine XI, thanks for posting the update! @Jersey, these shiny spots don't completely correspond with fold marks, they're rub marks from the padding on the clam-shell. Some of the shiny spots on mine are in places that don't get origami'd.

Nine and I have been PMing off and on about this, once he found out it's caused by rubbing, I ran some experiments.

1) Put water on the driver's side markings then closed the top and see where the water transferred onto the clam-shell.
- This worked very well, you can see in the pics exactly where the padding rubs the roof.

Water on the driver's side markings:


Water transfered:

and


2) Inverse the experiment: put water all over the clam-shell padding and then close the roof. Look for water transfer onto the roof.
- This was harder because the cabrio roof is very water resistant, making transfer from the padding to the roof unlikely. I had to do this experiment a few times, but was able to find a few drops that transferred to the passenger side markings (which I had left dry in #1). I did not find any drops elsewhere.



Next step is to maybe try a sticky substance to use transfer from the foam pad to the cabrio roof... but I also don't want to ruin either the pad or the roof. =P

Here's the full photo album:
https://plus.google.com/photos/11675...87334169900769

Here's a youtube video of the top opening and closing:

 

You could also use something like a contact paper, something that is pressure-sensitive (like the stuff i use on my golf club heads to check where my club is contacting the ball -- or NOT!). Apply it to the clam-shell or where you think it is contacting, and you should see the touch points. Contact like this between the clam and your soft top wasn't a design feature. I would guess that the clearance is slightly different car to car due to differences in alignment of the shell to the body, etc. Perhaps it can be adjusted to give a tiny bit more of clearance or something....

Good Luck and keep us posted!

 

I have not had this problem and regularly take my top down. The area on the sides behind the window will have fold marks for a few days if I leave down long but have always come out. Mine is a 2014 and brown.

 

I have a 2013 C4S Cab and dont have the problem you have but looking at your video and it seems that the fold has a lot of pressure being put on it from the panel underneath. I am not sure I am explaining it correctly but when I went and looked at my roof going down and looking at the same area there is no pressure from the panel being pressed against the fabric.

 

I'm not sure if there's enough pressure to leave a mark on contact tape, but I'll give it a shot. If that doesn't work, I think I'll try coating the clam-shell with baby powder. If that fails, I'll buy some luminol and a blacklight =P

 

no problems with my 06 cab(black) I always put the top up when not in use and treat it with ragtop 1X a year

 

I also have marks on my 13 cab. I've had them from the start and they have never gone away. No amount of cleaning or detailing has helped. I get the same answers from the dealer that there is no fix. Mine are not as noticeable as yours but still annoying! Next time I'm at the dealer I'll talk to them about pressure points, it won't fix the. Arks I have but may stop them from getting worse.

 

*If* the clam-shell rubbing does turn out to be the problem and *if* Porsche won't warranty it, I might consider just buying a new top. I saw a thread on rennlist that quoted $6500. Gives me something to ponder... better looking top or better sounding exhaust. Hmmm...

 

Alright, I have some success to report back. I decided to go straight for the baby powder method rather than try impact tape. At first I tried using my shaving brush to apply the baby powder to the clam-shell padding, but it was wasn't working very well. So I tried the brute force method: poor the powder in my hands and smear it all over the pad. This worked very well! I was able to completely coat the foam pad with the baby powder. I dropped the top, waited a couple minutes, then brought it back up.

Baby Powder coating:


The result? Big white marks exactly where the shiny spots are. There was also a thin white line where the metal joint is on the roof, the one that goes all the way across. This pretty much confirms our suspicion of the pad rubbing against the top.

Driver's Side:


Passenger's Side:



Also... while I was cleaning the powder from the foam padding, I noticed wear marks on the right and left side of the car. Yesterday I saw this and thought it was water transfer (which it may have also been), but the wear markings on the foam pad are visible when dry.

Passenger's side foam wear marks:


Driver's side foam wear marks:



After all that, I thought I could have a little fun with the baby powder:
https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-r...515_194540.jpg

Full album here:
https://plus.google.com/photos/11675...CIyfi6L3tau8Jw


Needless to say, I'll be going into the dealer to 'discuss'

 

I take back what I said after looking more closely at the pics. On my 997tt they were mostly fold marks that did come out after the top was up for a while. This is much worse. Sorry, hope you get it worked out. Looks like you are almost there in figuring it out.

 

Alright, I swung by Fletcher Jones Porsche today and gave my song & dance to the service people (Scott and Gunter), but I'm pretty sure they thought I was a crazy person. Gunter took some pictures and said he'd send the to Porsche to see what they thought, but it seemed clear to me that the service department of Fletcher Jones isn't going to be an advocate for me. =(

For you lucky cab owners who don't have this problem, would any of you mind popping open your clam-shell and looking for wear marks on the padding? Bonus points if anyone would be willing to try the 'baby powder' experiment to see where the clam-shell touches their cab tops.