Roof Broken.... Now fixed!

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domsz4

Veteran
so the long running roof issues I've been having are best summed up in this video. long story short. close roof one night after getting home and the roof closes over and wouldn't lock. then it wouldn't do crap all. apart from the video. I replaced the motor (the old one i still have an had NO rust or damage) still the same.



anyway this smacks of a sensor issue. There are 4 sensors on the car. 2 in the roof above the passenger in the frame at the front and 2 on the frame on the passenger side just by the door. (you can see one)
The roof sensors were my first investigation as they are the easier to get to. To get into these you have to remove the inner rood lining which is 6 screws to remove the inside cowl. with this removed you can access the wiring loom. to get to the actual sensors you have to take the actual roof material off. this is done by undoing more screws that are under the inner roof lining trim.
After testing the sensors i looked at the loom. there are 3 wires. one power feed ~10.5V and 2 returns. by measuring voltage over the input and 1 return you can measure the 10.5V. i found one was working and one did not. if you open the roof i was able to get a voltage reading out of both. as you close the roof the point at which it stops the voltage reading stops. this indicated a broken wire.
replacing these wires is tricky and required all of the trim and the main roof bolts to be removed. i fed a new wire up the sheathing and splced it into the to two plugs as i did not have replacement AMP crimps using a inine heatshrink butt connector. reconnected the wiring, bolted all the roof back down and stuck all the trim on and now the roof works 100%

so to recap if your roof does what mine was doing then its probably the wiring to the 2 sensors in the roof.
 
Exact same problem I have, fancy sorting mine for me? I'm not confident to tackle that. :)

£££££££'s waiting.
 
lol im moving Leicester next week.... no idea where specifically mind! thats not too far away so im happy to help. now ive done it on mine i recon less than an hour to perform a few rudimentary tests on the wiring!

seriously tho, this was not a motor problem esp given the way my motor was massively clean and very well sealed, and the way it just stopped ad would move up to a specific point was 100% a sensor issue. I've seen it too many times on other systems. A motor would just not work this was working and then stopped dead just like something was tripped.
 
Well done on the fault-finding - good result. Any idea what caused the wire to fail?
Also, what are you doing with your old roof motor? Shouldn't have much trouble selling it I think.
 
Respect for working this one out, one more to add to the list of thing s to check when the roof gremlins hit.... :)
 
Nice work. :thumbsup: Hate to think what a stealer would have charged you to sort that out. :dizzy:
 
yeah me too.... but im chuffed its done and working, was not going to let this roof defeat me! i did have a little panic tho as the roof closed fine but then when i pressed the open button nothing! the orange light started flashing a a few choice words were said :D but a bit of quick thinking and i traced it to me not putting the shelf back in properly :D

i would guess that simply the wires in the braiding have rubbed or where it flexed in the roof there is a break. like i said when closed the voltage was fluctuating ~300mv so just background on the meter. open it was 10.5V ish as you lifed the roof it would hit a point and drop.

this is something you have to track you cant take the entire loom off easily without taking the roof off and you need to be willing to dismantle stuff such as the looms and the plugs. they are easy enough to do AMP connectors are pretty simple. but write down stuff as a precaution such as wire colors and pin numbers.

russ if yours is doing the same i can talk you through the tests i did i recon about an hour to 90% verify the loom as a suspect. another few hours to fix
 
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