Fixed Power Cab Top (again!)

[megerian]

I never intended to become an expert on the cabriolet top, but this one thing has occupied more of my time since buying the car 5+ years ago than anything else on the car.

The design of the cab top is prone to failures, especially in the control arm mechanism, and I know that a lot of folks have abandoned the power function and just changed over the manual. But I am stubborn, and I do sort of enjoy the problem solving aspect of it.

On Friday the top stopped working - it was clear that the right side was not moving, so I took everything apart and started troubleshooting. In my experience, the rear drive motors seldom fail, so I figured it was likely to be the right side control arm transmission assembly. This is located behind the passenger side speaker panel. I loosened up the control arm from the transmission so I could troubleshoot the problem without it actually being engaged with the cab top.

As expected, I push the cab button, the right side is not moving at all. Actually, the left side isn't moving that well either. I remove the assembly from the car, take it all apart, and it seems fine. The worm and sector are working fine, and when I manually rotate the drive cable, I can see the gears move... hmmm.

After some head scratching, I noticed that the end of the drive cable that inserts into the rear drive motors is not protruding very far from the end of the cable termination cap. I vaguely recalled reading somewhere that this was another known failure point. So the right side cable was not engaging at all, and the left side was barely engaging.

So just order two new cables, right?

That was gonna cost $600 bucks!! Plus a week waiting for parts - and I am both impatient and a bit cheap. So I took a carpet cutter, cut off the ends of both cables, drilled out the plastic remnants of the cable jacket still in the termination caps, then pushed it onto the end, and I ended up with this:




Voila! - reinserted both sides, back to working!! No cost.