by Louisd75 » Thu Aug 30, 2018 10:49 pm
Kevin,
Just getting caught up on my emails and also saw your post on here. I'm with the camp concerned about water getting in. I'm not sure how effective the canvas covering would be unless there's something else going on with the waterproofing that isn't obvious in the pictures. The screening looks like it extends across the width of the body and is held in place with the aluminum edging.
You might be able to get something like that to seal up using the vinyl insert edging material underneath where the canvas would go. Instead of using the vinyl insert piece I would run a continuous piece of bulb rubber seal. The problem that you'll run into is the front and back edges... it might take some figuring to get those to seal properly.
Having said all that, VW had canvas roofs on some of their microbuses pre '68 if I recall. It might be worth looking at how they seal the edges.