Help my roof isn’t working !!!!!

[Zed 4 newbie]

Hi to everyone on here, hoping that someone may be able to help me with my roof ?

Will start from the beginning, I got my 2004 bmw z4 only last week, it was a private sale and they did say to me that the roof wasn’t working properly and so they had tried to fix it themselves by moving the motor into the boot, they also said it was a new motor.

I will try my best to describe what happens in order, but apologies in advance if I witter on only don’t want to miss anything:

I get the car running and I press the button to lower the roof
I hear the motor in the boot and the windows go down slightly
The roof unlocks from the windscreen and starts to go back
It only get to open about 12” / a foot then it just stops and the motor stops
When you look at the button it is flashing red
Now when you try to press it again it does nothing ????
When you try to press the close button it does nothing ????
I turn the car off and wait a for about 30 seconds or so, start it up again and if I press the close button it comes back towards the windscreen and locks ????

Now going back to when I try to open the roof and it stops I have to go into the boot and pull the red tab ( sorry don’t know the official name of it ) and turn it 90 degrees to lock it into position and then I have to manually push it back down to have it open , I then turn the red tab and push it back in.

Now when I try to get the roof back up by pressing the button it seems to do nothing when it is fully back, so again I pull the red tab and pull the roof back up then start the car and press the button for the last bit and it locks to ?????

Now I don’t know if it’s worth mentioning but the motor is just in the boot not attached to anything ( I intend on using some cable ties to secure it to one side ) and didn’t know if this could be causing it not to work properly ????

I would love to be able to get it to work and would appreciate any advice/info on what it might be or things to check out for and where to look etc etc.

I am based in congleton cheshire, so if anyone on here is close to me who would be willing to look at it for me or again have any ideas I would be grateful to hear from you.

I love the car, and would love to get the roof working as it should .

Look forward to hearing your advice, thanks in advance

 

[Z4_LZF]

I found this troubleshooter a while back. It might help.

 

[Zed 4 newbie]

Hi z4 lzf, thanks for your message I will take a look at this and see if it helps me diagnose the fault

 

[bigwinn]

That sounds to me without seeing it that you have a wire break in the loom

 

[Zedebee]

That sounds to me without seeing it that you have a wire break in the loom

Agree with that. The loom runs along the edge of the roof on the passenger side. At 20+ years old with repeated bending, the wiring can start to deteriorate. Most people who have reported this have identified a break in the small red wire.

You will need to strip back the loom and look for breaks where indicated, or perform continuity tests, but remember the disconnect is intermittent depending on roof position.

 

[Zed 4 newbie]

Hi thanks for your help, I will take a look at this and see if I find any breakages in the cables. Is this easy to do ? Many thanks