My convertible Bug ('54 plate) has since last year refused to retain the inner liner around the rear window in the roof. It looked as though the large plastic ring that the liner is sewn onto had actually shrunk, so when I tried to press it back in to the retainer channels around the window it would just pop out again somewhere else.

I don't know if anyone else has had this problem, or what the "official" solution might be, but I have devised my own and it seems to work well. What follows is what I did to my Bug - if you try the same then good luck to you but I won't be held responsible if it all goes wrong!!

I didn't want to be splodging tons of glue or anything around the place as I could see that the plastic ring could and should be able to be pressed fully into the retainer channels. So, what I did was to carefully cut the plastic ring in 4 places to allow it to expand a little and do that. I guess I could have cut it mid-way along each side but I wanted to limit the stretch that would be put on any one point of the cloth, so I actually cut twice along the bottom and twice along the top edges, about 15cm each side of mid point. Cutting involved using a small hacksaw, being careful not to cut the fabric and having previously dobbed a little superglue on the thread holding the fabric to the ring either side of the cut so it won't come undone after being cut.

Refitting the ring after that was relatively easy. There were some small metal retainer clips here and there (although not many) which I'd already found and saved, and when refitting I replaced them at what I though were prime locations around the ring, ie mainly on the side parts. I then pressed those side parts fully in first, starting in the middle and working up and down from there, and then pressed in the "floating" top and bottom edges. As long as the side parts are firmly in the top and bottom parts seem to stay put regardless, and the amount of stretch on the fabric where the cuts are is not enough to notice. All in all I am very satisfied with the end result, but more importantly, so is the bugs actual owner, my wife!!