Hi Tom.

Sorry buddy, didn't mean to offend.  You have a great little invention there.  When I attach my shelf it seemed to flatten out the center bar, which consequently made the distance between the struts greater.  This in turn caused the left side of the struts to rub against the side walls.  I tried forcing it over, only to crack my skylight housing. Yeah, I know I should not have been doing that with the top down--dumb move on my part.

Something is definitely askew with my poptop, so I seriously doubt it's related to your shelf, but it does exacerbate the situation.  I tend to do most of my cooking outside, so rarely use the shelf anyway or forget it's there!  I'm laughing to myself here as I just went camping last weekend  and had stuff all over the place and probably could have made good use of it .  Totally forgot it was there!

Perhaps somebody else can get some use out of it .  I have 2 stainless steel bars  with it as well, which I never did get around to installing.  This is one of these inventions that sounded great in theory, but in reality rarely got used in my case.  Again, no reflection on the design.  I actually think it's rather clever.

Troy

----- Original Message -----
  From: Thomas Buese
  To: Troy
  Cc: vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM
  Sent: Saturday, May 28, 2011 3:59 PM
  Subject: Re: Pop top issue

  On May 28, 2011, at 2:06 PM, Troy wrote:
    ...................

    Just moving the tongue part of the large upfront has helped a bit.  I have
    also removed my Tom buese shelf, as I think this is causing the pop top
    struts to tweak a bit in the wrong direction.

   Huh?

  Coincidently, recently I replaced my OG poptop seals w/ new BD ones, & noticed how they made my poptop really hard to latch as the front seal was much stiffer than the original one.
  I think that is Ron's fault!!!!

    If anyone is interested in a shelf, give me a shout.  I think I'm going to
    leave it off. I never much use it anyway.

  LOL!

  Keeping my new seals, so don't even ask for them, even if the poptop is only up 1% of the time.

  Mr. BZ-it's always my fault!

  ................................................