Length: 25:47
Created: May 25, 2022
[0:00] What’s up, guys? Today we’re going to be installing the Primal Soft Cab Enclosure on this Can-Am Defender. Let’s get right to it.
[00:29] The first thing we’ll do is clean all around the outside of the cage, all the plastic through here, the plastic through here, with some denatured rubbing alcohol. Go ahead—I’m going to put quite a bit of rubbing alcohol on here and make sure we get it good and clean. That way, our hook and loop will bond to the material property.
[01:02] We got rubbing alcohol on. Go ahead and scrub it clean. It’s important not to spray any WD-40 or cleaner that will leave oil or anything like that on the machine. Usually, take some Dawn dish soap and wash it down before doing a soft cab. That way, whenever you hit it with the rubbing alcohol, it will get any contaminants or anything from the plastic and cage, so our hook and loop properly adhere.
[01:44] Also, make sure you’re using a lint-free rag. I’m using a microfiber cloth, so we’re not leaving anything behind. If you were to use a paper towel, you’d leave particles behind, and that’s not good for the hook and loop.
So once you’ve got it good and clean, go ahead and clean it again. This would be the second time we’ve cleaned ours. So we’re all good to go.
So now we’re going to get our passenger side soft cab door, and we’ll grab the straps on the soft cab door here. You want to wrap them around the cage and loosely tighten them to where you still move them from side to side. Right now, we’re just trying to get it in position—we want it to lay correctly on the cage itself so we know where to put our hook and loop fasteners.
[03:15] If you want to, you can remove your rear windshield if you have one installed. We’re just going to leave ours on today. It’s not really in the way, and just kind of pull it around a little bit to get your straps through. But you would need to remove your roof if you had one installed on your machine.
Now we’re going to adjust around on the soft cab. And you will have to adjust it up and down and move around to get it into position where it needs to be.
[04:21] Now we’re going through and trying to get this cab enclosure as close to where it’s going to be as possible. As you can see, we’ve got it rotated up to where it fits the contour of the cage and then fits down there nicely. You want to keep doing this until you feel good about where it’s at. As I said, it should sit just about like this.
Once we have it in place, we’ll know where we need to start putting the hook and loop fasteners.
[04:56] So this is what your soft cab should look like. If you look here, you have your snaps going down through the side—it should fit the contour of the body very well. And then back here same thing—it should fit the contours of the plastic where all your snaps are going to line up nicely.
So I like to put my hook and loop fasteners on the top of the cage first. That way, we have something to hang the whole cab door off of. And then, we can make some minor adjustments and lay down the rest of our hook and loop. So we’ll show you what you need to do on the top for the hook and loop.
[05:31] So what you want to do here is cut a piece of hook and loop to 435 millimeters. Then we’ll roll this flap down to where we can take out the hook and loop and go ahead and attach it. Once we have it attached, we’ll roll it back and peel the backing off of it. Next, take it and stick it to the roll cage of the machine.
Doing it this way makes sure that we’re going to get it to the correct location. Now that’s not to be said that you can’t take it back, loosen it and adjust it if necessary. Because we do need to adjust a little bit, but that’s perfectly fine. We’re going to get all of our hook and loop on and then go back through once everything’s set up, and we can start adjusting around on our soft cab to get it to where it fits perfectly.
[07:03] This is all we did when we wanted to determine the measurement of our hook and loop that we needed to cut. We get it laid, pull the flap out, let it lay on the cage where it needs to be, and then measure it. Now we’re just going to cut a piece of 300mm of our hook and loop.
So for this one here, we’re not going to attach it to the flap first. As you can see, it has a bit of a contour. It can make it difficult to get it to stick to the cage. What we’re going to do is just kind of roll this flap down and out of the way. And we know that we need to apply our hook and loop in this area here. So we’re just going to peel the backing take our hook and loop, and apply it.
[08:21] And you’ll have some wrinkles. Keep working. You can get them out. The same process here measures this flap—382. And we’ll do 227 on that one. So now we need to lay this out where it needs to be, and then again, we’ll peel out flap back out the way, take our hook and loop, and we want to apply it like so. It looks like I may have cut that just a little long, so we’re just going trim it down a little bit—no problem.
[09:56] Take it, roll it over this edge to make sure that it’s adhering to the cage, Do the same thing for this section here: take your hook and loop, peel the backing, roll and touch that edge over. Now we’re going to the back and measuring the last flap—it looks like it measures 174mm. We’ll cut a piece that’ll be 173 that’ll be just fine. Now we have our piece that we went ahead and cut. Just lay this up here until we figure out where it needs to be. It looks like it is right in this area here.
And as you can see, it’s going to lay over this spot where your cage bolts go through. I’m going to grab a razor knife and trim that area out.
[11:38] Now, we need to apply the hook and loop from this point down the cage, all the way to the bottom of the plastic. We’ll cut a piece of hook and loop that follows the cage down here to the plastic and then cut it off. We’re just rough estimating here, going to kind of lay it out so right here in this corner. Take a pair of scissors, a razor blade, and cut a piece this big and just lay it up, check it real quick to make sure that’s going to work. It looks like it’s going to be just fine,
[12:25] We’ll go ahead and peel our backing, get our soft cab out of the way as much as we can. We’ll take it and stick it up top, get it good and fastened. Then in this corner, what we’re going to do is where it’s making this bend is just cut the hook and loop essentially in half.
We’re now going to adhere it to the cage, and then we can make that turn to run it down. Once it attaches to the cage properly, we know it’s all good up here, and we’re going to run a piece all the way down to the bottom. I like to follow this line and try to line it up right with the “O” on the arch on the Rotax right here.
[13:43] Again, we’re going to eyeball it here, lay it out, eyeball it and make a cut. We’re going to take our next piece, and we’re going to run it right down through here to the bottom at an angle. So again, eyeball it here, lay your hook, and loop out. So I’m going to cut here—it should look like this.
We have a little bit of excess there. That’s where it’s going to lay on that seam. I’m just going to go ahead and cut it off. If you don’t cut these off before they lay flat like this, then what’s going to happen is over time, you’ll get dirt behind it, and eventually, it’ll lift. So right here, we have a little spot too. I’m just going to peel it up just a touch. I’m just going to cut the bottom off of it. That way, we know it’s adhering to the plastic and not sitting down in the crease where dust, dirt, and debris can get behind the adhesive and cause it to lift.
[15:46] We’ll go ahead and get our soft cab into position. We’re still going to have to make adjustments. I’m going to have to pull these off and pull the soft cab off, so I’m not going to worry about our straps just yet. Before we get to the point where we’re at the final install, we’ll want to make sure those straps are on. But right now, when we’re just checking where it’s going to lay out to make sure it’s good.
[16:31] So essentially, all we’re doing here is checking to ensure we have our hook and loop in the right position. And the soft cab door looks good. As you can see, it’s laying out nicely here, so we’ll go ahead and peel this back side up again.
[16:59] In every spot we have a snap, we will paint these snaps with a paint marker. You want to be quick, get the paint on it, and go to the next one.
Then stretch it and stick it. Once you’ve got it stuck, go ahead and push on your buttons just like so. Make sure they’re good, and once we peel it back, we can see we have all of our marks where we need our snaps.
[18:08] We’ll install them right to the center of our marks. You can use a Phillips head screwdriver. I’m just going to use a drill. It’s going to make things a little bit faster. Make sure not to tighten them because you can strip them out. You’re just tightening in the plastic.
[18:52] In this next part, we’ll be fastening the cab enclosure’s front section to the machine. Now with our machine, we have the SuperATV heavy-duty Fender Flares installed. If you’re in the same situation and have our fender flares installed, you can do one of two things: remove the flares and fasten the cab enclosure to the actual body of the machine, then reinstall your flares. You could install the hook and loop down across the fender flare.
Or the way that we’re going to do it is we’re going to mark all of our snaps, and we’re just going to directly snap this to the plastic everywhere that we can. Then once we get down here to the flares, we’ll attach it to the flare itself.
[19:45] So we’re going to go ahead and paint our snap just like we did. Then put the cap back on your marker. Take it and pull as hard as you can, and lay it on the plastic. That way, we have a nice mark there.
We’re going to do it a little bit differently on this side—as we go, we’ll install our snaps. There’s a snap. And we’ll continue this process down to our final snap.
[22:41] So, at this point, we have our cab enclosure secured all the way around except on the very bottom lip. You’re going to have to leave your cab enclosure fully installed. You will not be able to unzip your door or anything like that. You’re going to have to come in on the inside, and you’ll see you have two snaps on the bottom of this flap—it’s going to be the same process. All we’re going to do is mark the snaps and then push down firmly on the plastic, and then go ahead and insert our snaps with our screwdriver or drill.
So now we’re going to flip the flap up, mark them just as we’ve been doing. There’s nothing different about the process of installing these snaps. So now that we have our snaps marked, we’ll go ahead and install our snaps. As I said, it’s the same process.
Once your snaps are installed, attach your cab enclosure to the snaps just like so.
Now that we have our cab enclosure fully installed on the passenger side, as you can see, it has good tension all over. That’s what you’re looking for. And if you don’t have good tension, you can come back here and adjust.
[24:40] At this point, you want to make sure that all your straps are installed, as we’re previously speaking. And it functions very easily—all you have to do is grab your zipper, unzip it down to the bottom, and climb in the cab. Once you’re in, there’s a zipper on the inside, zip it right back up and you’re good to go.
Now we’re just going to repeat all these same steps for the opposite side.
[25:29] That’s all there is to it, SuperATV’s Primal Softcab on this Can-Am Defender.
Be sure to check the description below for a link to pick yours up today. While you’re there, drop a like, comment, and subscribe. Thanks for watching, and we’ll catch you on the next one.
