88 Carrera sunroof

[Raulg]

The sunroof in my car retracts about 2 inches and stops.
I removed the inner cover and the cables seemed attached fine. Although hard to see.
I unzipped the headliner by the sunroof motor and noticed the motor transmission spins normally however the sunroof stops and if I press the sunroof switch, the motor spins but the transmission gear will not spin.

I took the transmission part out and was only able to slide the sunroof the 2 inches it moved under power.

Is the sunroof supposed to slide all the way back when the transmission/motor are disconnected from the cables?

It appears that something is jamming and preventing the sunroof from retracting more than 2 inches or so.
Any advice would be much appreciated.
Thank you
Raulg

[chrisbruck]

Funny, I had to take mine apart last night because the passenger side wouldn't pop up flush correctly. If you haven't already, pull out the actual sunroof panel and then you can look back under the roof where it retracts. There are 8 tiny hex head bolts holding it in. Undo these, and it should just pop right out (don't scratch anything). The first time mine quit working I found a rubber plastic sleeve that popped off and got lodged in the rear track.

The other problem mine had was the front edge of the roof panel was catching after it went back about 2 inches. There are some plastic "slides" on the front edges that I believe push down the wind deflector. One of my slides broke and the metal lip of the roof edge was catching on it's way backwards.

Should be easy to see either issue with the roof panel removed.

[billydeakins]

Raulg - I had the same exact problem on my car when i bought it. Push the button, motor works fine but only retracts 2 inches. I unzipped the headliner and everything looked fine and motor worked no problem. I had a friend looking at it with me and he was outside the car and noticed that as I pushed the button to open the roof, it opened the 2" and then you could see that the driver side wanted to keep going back but the passenger side stopped. So as he pushed on the button to open the sunroof, I pulled back on the passenger side of the sunroof....not super hard but just kind of firmly. There was a bit of a pop and then the sunroof slid open and has worked ever since. I'm not sure if one of the cables was just lodged or what but it works great now! Good luck!

[ned903]

Raulq,
If you have not already found it, Wayne has posted a tech article on rebuilding a sun roof. When I did mine a few years back, the biggest problem seemed to be failure of the plastic guides. It is a straight forward rebuild if you study the article and take it step by step.

[Raulg]

Thank you all for your replies.
I disconnected the transmission/motor to be able to move the cables and started taking the sunroof panel off by unscrewing the bolts that attached the end of the cables to the sunroof.
While giggling the sunroof a bit, the sunroof got loose and I was able to pull it back.
Looking from the top I noticed that one of the plastic tabs that rest under the sunroof leading edge was missing (part of it).
The missing part is the edge that lays under the sunroof and on top of the guide, the one that pops up as the sunroof retracts. The missing plastic appears to let the edge of the sunroof to get wedged just at 2" of travel.

I placed an order for the plastic "supports" from PP. The diagram is not very clear and these plastic pieces are not mentioned in Wayne's write up.

I will take some photos and post back when I get the parts and install them.

I appreciate your taking time to shed some light into this problem,
Thank you
Raulg