Sunroof problem

[Jerry Smith]

My O/E electric tilt & slide sunroof has stopped tilting! It still slides open fully and closes but now needs two button presses to open and two to close. At the first press of the button the sunroof slides back only an inch and stops. Releasing the button and pressing it a second time gets the sunroof fully open. Closing the sunroof now needs a first press of the button to get it 95% closed and a second press to get it fully home. The car is a 1995 2.6 Avant and the sunroof was working perfectly on both tilt and slide until last week. The mechanism has been kept lubricated.

Any suggestions will be much appreciated.

[dos]

My O/E electric tilt & slide sunroof has stopped tilting! It still slides open fully and closes but now needs two button presses to open and two to close. At the first press of the button the sunroof slides back only an inch and stops. Releasing the button and pressing it a second time gets the sunroof fully open. Closing the sunroof now needs a first press of the button to get it 95% closed and a second press to get it fully home. The car is a 1995 2.6 Avant and the sunroof was working perfectly on both tilt and slide until last week. The mechanism has been kept lubricated.

Any suggestions will be much appreciated.

I recently had to repair the sunroof on my wife's 80 (O/E) which would sometimes tilt open and not close or not tilt at all until another time.
The power is supplied by a relay under the driver's side parcel shelf (203 if I remember but it is labelled on the padded cover that has to be removed). This relay had some dry joints which I resoldered. The power is then sent to the overhead console with the sunroof switch and interior light in it. Behind this is the motor drive unit, the motor relay and the roof position microswitches. A single connector, about 1" long and 1/4" square carries the drive voltage to the system. Until you turn on the ignition it is only 5 volts, but will stay at 12v after activating the roof, turning off the ign. or closing the driver's door. I removed the blue (3 wire) microswitch, which controls the tilt action, cleaned the contacts and rebuilt everything. Fault gone.
I hope you can get something helpful from my experience.
I only manage to get to get to this website about once a week or else I would have seen your posting earlier.
Regards Dos.

[Jerry Smith]

Hi Dos. Many thanks for your response and suggested cure. Just now the sunroof's job is not letting the sun into the car but keeping all the rain out!! Summer? What's that?! As soon as the weather improves I'll get out there and follow your advice ref the microswitch. I will let you know how I get on; in the meantime thank you again for your reply. Regards, Jerry

[dos]

Hi Jerry

Sorry it has been so long getting back to you, I do not get to the office very often.

Further to my first reply, I do not think the problem is the microswitch that caused my fault. I feel your electrics are fine. What I think has happened is that the synchronisation between the roof position and the switching in the control unit has been lost.

My reasoning :

1 Roof open, press fwd. roof closes - almost - it thinks it is shut.
2 Press fwd. again, it now closes - but it thinks it has tilted open.
3 Press fwd. again - nothing - as you would expect if it was tilted open.
4 Press back and it opens a little way - it thinks it's closed the tilted roof.
5 Press back again and it slides open, but maybe to a different position to
that which it used to before your fault.

I would suggest that you close the roof, drop down the roof switch and light assembly, unscrew the overhead trim and let it dangle. Then you will be able to lower the drive motor by loosening the three retaining screws by about 5mm. This will have disconnected the drive pinion from the driven portion of the roof system. If you now press "back", once, the motor and the cams will move to the "roof closed" position. The motor can now be raised back to the operating position and the screws tightened.

Now, the awkward bit, I think the roof will slide open and close as it should, HOWEVER, if you ask for tilt, either, it will tilt as it should, or, if it is jammed as far as tilt is concerned you will be back to where you are now.

Your fault caused me to revisit my problem and I have found that my roof is much quieter and much smoother after removing the lining and lubricating the cams and slides from inside the car.

Regards Dos.

[Jerry Smith]

Hello again Dos and thank you for a very detailed 2nd reply; I've not had the chance to yet try your 1st suggested fix - and to be honest it's not been sunroof weather round here since June. I have to say that your points 1-5 are a spot-on description of the symptoms and I will give your proposed solution a whirl next week. But, being a technical whimp, I will give your earlier suggestion a go first before moving to Plan B. The sunroof, for all its present sins, does still keep the rain out and my worst nightmare would be for it to conk out in the open position - so fingers crossed for next week! I will of course let you know how I get on. Again my thanks for your help.
Regards Jerry

[dos]

Hello again Dos and thank you for a very detailed 2nd reply; I've not had the chance to yet try your 1st suggested fix - and to be honest it's not been sunroof weather round here since June. I have to say that your points 1-5 are a spot-on description of the symptoms and I will give your proposed solution a whirl next week. But, being a technical whimp, I will give your earlier suggestion a go first before moving to Plan B. The sunroof, for all its present sins, does still keep the rain out and my worst nightmare would be for it to conk out in the open position - so fingers crossed for next week! I will of course let you know how I get on. Again my thanks for your help.
Regards Jerry

I,m back in the lab again so I could look to see how you were getting on.
If you are worried about having the roof remain open you can always close it manually once the operating switch and the little cover are lowered. Clipped to the inside of the cover is a double cranked allen key. This fits into the centre of the white wheel that drives the red wheel with the cams on it that trip the microswitches. You will notice that there is a shiny silver rod about 1/8" diameter and 1.5" long sitting left to right across the car with the left hand end trapped in a small detent. If you pull down this end out of the detent and swing it towards the back of the car ie. towards the white wheel you will have disengaged the motor from the gearbox and will be able to operate the roof with the allen key by inserting it into the centre of the white wheel and turning it. It does not turn endlessly in any one direction, only to the limits that would normally apply if the roof is working correctly.
PS. The very first ime you roof did not operate correctly was there a clicking noise as it did not tilt properly ?

[Jerry Smith]

Hello Dos. SUCCESS!! I followed your procedure almost to the letter and I have a fully functioning sunroof. Fingers crossed that it remains so. I went about it by disconnecting the wiring and removing the motor from the car. It was immediately evident that the toothed wheels were not in their correct alignment for the fully closed position. I was able to remove the plastic cover and move the wheels into the fully closed position with a 4mm allen key, refit the motor & wiring harness and Bingo. So a big thank you for setting me on the right road. The reason I could not follow your method to the letter was that the battery was flat as a pancake after a few days away. This has happened several times since the sunroof problem started & I replaced the battery only 3 weeks ago. Could it be that this was in some way linked to the sunroof problem do you think? It would be a real bonus if we've managed to kill two birds with one stone; only time will tell I guess. Again Dos, many, many thanks for your guidance and reassurance; you're a STAR!

Regards
Jerry

[dos]

Hi Jerry,
I'm pleased that you now have a working sunroof. At the moment I am not able to tell you whether your battery problem could be linked to the roof malfunction since although I sketched out the circuit whilst I was working on my roof I do not have it with me here in the lab where I do some work. Even then, it is at the moment only in bird's nest form. Clearly if the low battery situation does not arise again all well and good, but, if it does keep happening you will need to look for a continual current drain when the car is put to bed. Should this be the case and you suspect the roof you can monitor any unusual current flow by putting an ammeter in the single supply line to the roof electrics. More generally you could look in with an ammeter directly at the battery feed to all the car's electrics, however this could mean having to reset the radio with it's code.
As a matter of interest was it apparent as to why the roof position was not in sync with the control mechanism thereby giving you the problem that you have just resovled?

Regards dos.

[Jerry Smith]

Hi dos. Thank you for getting back to me yet again! Answering your last point first: there was no apparent reason why the sunroof motor had jumped out of sequence; a journey of 80 odd miles began with the tilt working on the button but ended with the symptoms previously described, no whirring or graunching noises or whiff of burning plastic. It is still working properly and, fingers crossed, long may it do so. The battery drain seems to be unconnected and may be something to do with the new CD/radio fitted back in May. I will be going in to that problem over the next few days and may have someone with more knowledge than me (not difficult!) go over the charging system to be on the safe side with winter approaching fast. Thank you for your continuing interest; I will let you know how I get on.

Regards
Jerry

[Jerry Smith]

Hi Dos. This goes back to the help you gave me some months ago in sorting out my sunroof problems; just to say that the roof continues to work properly and that the flat battery was caused by the Alpine ICE system which was continuing to draw current at 10X the normal rate when switched off, due to an internal fault. Since the ICE was disconnected, the battery has held charge perfectly.

Hopefully we will get a decent summer so that I can make use of the sunroof! Anyway, thanks again for all your help.
Regards
Jerry