Quote:Which brand top is better, Robbins or GAHH?
Do not believe either to be a brand of material. When I did this research years ago tops and materials were like buying mattresses....the names are obscured to facilitate the fact that all the material is made by one manufacturer. Top suppliers at times use their own pet names to obscure this fact.
GAHH is a company who takes fabric from Haartz and with their own home made pattern cuts out the top to have OEM like fit
GAT is the same but use their own pattern
Believe Robbins is the same.
Tops online sells GAHH tops as far as I can tell
GAHH sells to many upholstery shops and they price protect their stuff so you cant buy at the same price their shops buy the top. I have found that GAHH has a better fitting top IMHO than GAT. The GAT top needed to be stretched quite a bit more and my upholstery shop complained loudly and showed me the difference in size on the original top vs the one purchased from GAT.
Haartz actually makes all the top materials for all these companies who do their best to produce a pattern to sell an OEM fit top. Check
www.haartz.com and you will find all the names you have seen in your search in this madness. One of the reps at Haartz indicated to me that the Twilfast material was the same as what all these companies call German....and that one is produced here in the US and one comes from their factory in Europe/Germany. Read about Twilfast, Stayfast, Twilfast II, 3, 4 etc....etc.... Then when you call and talk to GAT, GAHH, et al they stumble and mutter when you know about Haartz and the actual material names and then you get to the reality that you either get Stayfast cheaper not as thick, or Twilfast with lots of names including "German" which have similar build, layers and thickness. Every guy who owns a Porsche wants "German" because its more expensive and "has" to be better. NO. Ask for a rep at Haartz to walk you down this path, they dont like to do it and its like pulling teeth to lift the veil on this industry.
The other variable seems to be the size of the rear window. I ignorantly figured this was a specific size for this car but clearly this is wide open for the aftermarket companies who sew these tops which window they choose and perhaps the quality of the materials. The GAHH windows seems a bit bigger in my Iris Cab than the GAT window in my Polar cab?? Have not strictly measured and documented but clearly different size. Flash, former proprietor of this site and all things 968 also spoke about getting his shop to make his window zippered so that it could be dropped even with top up. I could not get any love on this front from my shops or top suppliers. The hand crafted nature of all things upholstery is a dying breed so if you find a good one treat them nice.
In the end I think your better to buy your GAHH top from your upholstery guy and let him make a little markup on it and then OWN the problems as this is not an easy install. Pays 12 hours book rate to people who know what they are doing and have the specialty tools and glue. When I provided the tops in the past to satisfy my general cheapness I felt like I OWNED all the problems.
I just got a different cab back last week from a local shop (different than first one) and they did an OK job but the devil is in the details on these tops and there is MUCH custom fitting, stretching, adding, deleting and dealing with old rubber, plastic bits, stripped screws, etc...etc...
I wish you luck in finding a good local shop and getting your top fitted.
