Sunroof! Victory!

DavErb · 02-23-2008, 03:52 PM

I know theres been a gazillion sunroof threads ( becuase I've read them all) but I've just got to celebrate a bit.

The sunroof on my '83 has been a problem ever since I got the car a year ago. I've replaced the seals (twice, first one was to discover all the wrong ways of doing it), disassembled the roof and rails several times, cleaned all the crude that was blocking the drains (amazing how a couple of liters of cold water dumped in your lap under braking alerts you to these things) and have generally futzed around with the thing for a year. After all that it still would not quite close all the way. It would go all the way forward but the trailing edge of the panel would never rise all the way up to seal the gap and , as a consequence, the wind whistle was so loud the car was quieter with the roof open.

Finally today I pulled the sunroof transmission box and carefully pried it open and found a slipping clutch in it. Cleaned that all up , reinstalled it and it still did not work right. Then I realized the VERY IMPORTANT THING; the little bolt that normally covers the hole that you put the manual crank in is also the piece that applies pressure to the clutch plate in the sunroof transmission. This bolt *must* be tight or the transmission will slip prematurely. After I found a slim slot head screwdriver that fit properly in the slot (all the way to the bottom of the slot) I was able to tighten this bolt enough and now the sunroof closes like a champ.

Man , its the little stuff that always gets me

Buckterrier · 02-23-2008, 04:45 PM

Good for you Dave. I did something similar to my fresh air blower. Was making all kinds of racket, got it off, apart, cleaned it and no more noise!!

dentist90 · dentist90's Garage

I have a question for you... when your sunroof clutch was slipping did it make a terrible sound, like plastic ratchet gears jumping past each other? It's hard to describe the noise, but although my sunroof opens and closes properly if I keep my finger on the switch after the sunroof has reached the limit of travel it makes that terrible sound. I was concerned that it could be a sign that the clutch is beginning to wear out.

DavErb · 02-24-2008, 01:53 AM

^dentist90
It did make a significant noise when it reached its limit though I would not describe it as a terrible one. If its closing properly then its in good shape. It is designed to slip at some point when the mechanism can't advance any further. There really isn't a whole lot to wear out since the clutch is essentially a pair of metal washers stacked inside a cupped gear wheel. The gear wheel is driven by the moter via a worm gear. The cupped gear wheel transmits torque through the washer stack to a central pinion that has a small gear wheel that engages the two sunroof cables. The tensioning screw I mentioned in my first post adjusts the amount of pressure that forces the clutch washers discs into contact with each other and thus controls the amount of friction and torque the system is able to transmit.