John,
Your model BT7, unfortunately, had the top material completely independent of
the bows, which doesn't solve your problem. It did have the cotton webbing
straps, which stretched from the header bow to the rear seam above the window
where the rear bow fits. Instead of the back end of the webbing being attached
to the rear bow itself, as on the previous earlier type of thinner cranked-leg
bows, the webbing end was sewn only to the top fabric at the rear seam.
Your socket tube may have ovalled out, so for a start, you could try to
eliminate the play in the tube where the foot of the bow fits in, with a shim
to make it a tight fit.
You could revert to the earlier style top and run webbing straps from the
header bow and attach them to the rear bow with screws and washers to give
your bow assembly some stability, at least in one direction. Run the webbing
over top and around the back to the bottom of the tube so the screws don't
show as bumps. It would mean your top was now attached to the bows and would
be a bit more awkward to handle, but the previous models were ok with that.
If really locking the bows in place is more important to you than originality,
you could attach the webbing to the rear bow as above, but continue on down to
the rear alloy trim strip on the shroud, attaching each strap with a pair of
simple dome snap fasteners onto the inner face of the alloy trim (double
over the webbing).
Four spiked-ring carpet fasteners in each of the front carpets (two hidden
under the heelmat on the driver's side), and two on the flat portion of the
floor on each of the rear carpets. ( The early sixes had a third snap on top
of the raised spring bump but someone saved the company a few pennies per car
by eliminating these ).
Peter
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