Roof Problems :(

L

Lil_g_1234

Member
Morning all,

Last night I tried to take the roof of on my '03 E85. It has been going up and down fine but this time it got just behind the roll bars and then decided it didn't want to go any further. There was nothing blocking it. And the motor seemed to be fine too this point. I tried it both on my driveway and then on the road as my friend once had a problem with taking his audi roof off on a slope, but this didn't seem to effect it.

Has anyone experienced this before, I know what the cause maybe?

Any helps would be great.

Regards
 
Welcome to the Z4 forum, unfortunately one weak point on the Z4 is the roof motor which is located in such a place to virtually guarantee it will fail sooner or later due to water getting into the motor housing.
When you say that the motor 'seemed to be fine' do you mean it was running but the roof was moving, or that the motor used to work but now doesn't?

If the roof is down, then you can manually lift and shut it by doing the following:
• Open the boot and find the small red handle with a loop which is located by the left-hand boot hinge.
• Pull it about 10mm and twist through 90 degrees so that it stays pulled out slightly. This activates the by-pass valve on the hydraulic pump allowing you to manually move the roof.
• Press the shut roof switch to unlatch it (if fitted) then lift the roof from the centre (do not lift from one side) until the latches are pushed into the windscreen, then push the shut roof switch again to latch up and lock the roof.

You can manually raise lower the roof like this, however it is a pain so ultimately it will need sorting.
 
Hi, Thanks for your reply. The roof worked fine up until the point just behind the roll bars. (I will get a picture tonight) So I thought it may not be the roof motor.

When it got to this point the roof would not go back any further to the fully closed position. I Pressed the roof up button and it closed fully with no problems.

It just getting the roof back that last 6 inches that its not doing.
 
Hi, Thanks for your reply. The roof worked fine up until the point just behind the roll bars. (I will get a picture tonight) So I thought it may not be the roof motor.

When it got to this point the roof would not go back any further to the fully closed position. I Pressed the roof up button and it closed fully with no problems.

It just getting the roof back that last 6 inches that its not doing.
 
I know it sounds obvious but open the roof halfway and really have a good look at all of the mechanism, pivot points, on top of the boot tray and make sure you don't have anything getting in the way stopping it.
Make sure the boot tray in the roof of the boot is in the down position. The roof shouldn't move if the boot tray is up, but you never know.
Try the by-pass valve, the red hoop handle and see if you can manually move the roof down.

Unfortunately it's just a case of methodically working through everything that could be causing the roof to malfunction, but to me it sounds like something is obsructing it somewhere?

If you do find out the cause, please post back on here so that you can share you findings for anyone else who might have a similar problem in the future. :)
 
Should the rain stop I will have a good look tonight and see if there is anything obvious blocking it. I will let you know how I get on.
 
So I had a look at the weekend and the problem could not have been simpler, in fact it wasn't really a problem at all. When loading a suit case into the car the weekend before I had knocked one side of the roof compartment in the boot up. (why they have a roof compartment I don't know, it only gives you about 50mm more height) But still.. this being knocked up prevented the roof coming down. I'm guessing as it was only one side of it the roof did not recognise that this was the problem and therefore had no way of beeping to tell me there a problem. Simply lowered it back down on the twisting handle and wehey, she came down fine. Providing me with probably my last weekend of roof down motoring this year :)
 
Glad you got it sorted, however it shouldn't have moved at all with the parcel shelf partially up, seems there is a problem with your micro switch in the boot which inhibits roof movement when he parcel shelf is up !
 
perhaps you could put the roof up, raise the rear shelf up, then try to put the roof down (but don't let it get all the way down) - just see if the car lets you even start to open the roof. It should not. If it does, the microswitch in the rear may be stuffed (but I would have thought that would have triggered a 'shelf up' condition and prevented the roof from starting to open, regardless of whether the shelf was up or down.
Confusing.
 
Glad its working for you but gotta agree with fixit man, mine gives an orange light even with the roof compartment fully down with just something in the boot pushing against it, as I found out on my recent road trip
 
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