Soft Top Window Zipper Repair

By: Jay Hart

Do you find yourself straying away from drive through ATMs or fast food joints because your zipper doesn’t work quite like it once did?

I have recently decided it was time to do something about my failing window zipper on my 1999 TJ.

The first step in repairing your zipper is to understand the parts of the zipper and what commonly fails on a zipper. Ultimately, you will want to repair the zipper before the coil or teeth are damaged beyond use.

The zipper consists of a slider and either molded teeth, coil type, or metal teeth.

The slider consists of the body, pull, and crown.

This repair will focus on what can be done to the slider portion of the zipper. Once damage has occurred to the teeth, very little if anything, can be done to repair it properly.

The factory original zipper found on my 1999 TJ is an auto slider single pull separating coil type zipper.

Auto slider: Under some slider’s crowns, you may find a small bar, which is levered up whenever you yank the pull. There will be a little lock “talon” which will engage the teeth of the zipper, keeping it in place until you yank the pull, which “unlocks” the talon from the teeth. On the Jeep, the auto slider is used, and no locking function is used.

Single pull: the slider has only one crown allowing only one pull. This way, no one can walk up to your Jeep and open your window (easily) from the outside.

Separating: There are actually two sliders on one track (teeth).

Coil Type: The teeth are manufactured as a continual coil, bent to form teeth, which interlock.

My particular zipper got so bad, that both sliders were completely in need of attention, and some coil damage has already occurred.

To understand what fails, you need to understand how a slider is engineered.

There is little strength in a slider at the converging end, because there is no material to strengthen the body.

All the strength of the body is in the front as seen from the side: marked “X”. This inability to have any center support in the body toward the rear, due to the teeth of the zipper being in the way, allows the body to open up through wear and usage (opposing arrows).

As the rear of the body begin to open, the body will ride improperly on the teeth, possibly causing wear (as in my case). As the body rides improperly on the teeth, it is possible that the teeth will not engage properly. This is when you have zipped the window shut, but the zipper parts at the wrong end of the slider, wreaking havoc with your window.

After understanding just what the heck is going on with your zipper, it is very easy to fix.

All you need to do is use pliers to force the body of the zipper back tight against the coil teeth.

I used vice grips, but any similar tool will be good enough.

Be sure and squeeze the rear portion of the body of the slider, so nothing else will be crushed. You will need to squeeze equally on both sides of the crown. This is why I used locking pliers, so the tension will be equal on both sides, and the body of the slider will ride squarely on the teeth of the zipper.

The following pictures show what proper fit should look like. If your slider has unnecessary movement around the teeth, wear can occur:

Notice how the shoulder of the slider is nice and tight against the coil teeth:

This fix took me all of five minutes to find my pliers and shoot some pictures, and is very simple.

Now you can go treat yourself to take out at the drive through.