Panorama Roof Track Repair

[itscoo2pyopants]

My sliding areas on those rails are absolutely trashed. The one time that I decided to vent the roof it got stuck on me. Spent about an hour in a parking lot trying to get it to close manually. I ended up getting it to close but somehow "lost" the front rain gutter in the headliner / sunroof cassette. I have the sunroof disconnected for now until I figure out what to do with it. Have to play with it some more and see if I can find that "missing" rain gutter..

[fmugur]

In my case the rattle is described well by DevinFiesta in this thread. It seems like the guide or the rail do not match sizes. If I push the panel up I can feel and see the play in the area circled in red below:



Just to give you the idea. When you go over the bumps the panel will move up because of this play (but in the other side of the rail):



In the first picture you will see a piece of electric tape on the railing to prove the root cause of the problem. No more rattle and it is tight.
No idea if the gap is caused by lack of lubrication but filling that gap with two layers of tape (in my case) or a JB weld in that particular spot got rid of the rattle. The difference is that I filled the gap on the upper side of the track as there is not much pressure on that side, it's only to keep it in place. On the bottom part there is more force as the guide will push the rail up for the tilt position.



Anyways, no more rattle now but I wonder if that small guide is a piece that can be replaced without removing the entire cassette.

[Clockwork]

Ahhh JB weld would be much nicer to work with. So you placed the JB weld on top of track and not bottom? I wonder if a thin layer (smoothed out) on both sides is a good idea too. It seems the track is too skinny for the sliding part and that causes the tilt feature to not close and major rattles when panoramic roof is closed.

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[Doru]

Panoramic roof deconstruction, as per this forum.

Panorama sunroof repair Part 1:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXpDcy8C56Y

Panorama sunroof repair Part 2:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqmmFf9gARM

Panorama roof mechanism assembly:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDhEJvqQXo4

And another set of instructions:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EXUxdirwino

[Clockwork]

holy CRAP there is some serious engineering involved in this pano roof. Yeah. I'm not taking this apart, ever!

[Doru]

Originally Posted by Clockwork

holy CRAP there is some serious engineering involved in this pano roof. Yeah. I'm not taking this apart, ever!

Mike, Aaron said the repair is actually not bad at all. I talked to him not too long ago. I remember him telling me that the "worst" part is actually taking your time being time consuming and having to be meticulous, but the repair per-se being trivial.

[fmugur]

Originally Posted by Clockwork

Ahhh JB weld would be much nicer to work with. So you placed the JB weld on top of track and not bottom? I wonder if a thin layer (smoothed out) on both sides is a good idea too. It seems the track is too skinny for the sliding part and that causes the tilt feature to not close and major rattles when panoramic roof is closed.

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

Mike, in my case at least it was an easy fix. The problem was the gap. Check and make sure nothing is broken in there. Close the sunroof and push up lightly on the side the rattle is coming from. For me the gap/wiggling room was the thickness of two layer of electric tape.
Mark where the guide is and apply one layer of electric tape at the time on top of the track and see if pushing up the glass panel is still possible. Make sure you wipe all the grease before. If there is no more wiggling room then use a thin layer of JB welding in that particular spot only and you should be good.

[Clockwork]

Good procedure. I have 2 layers of red electric tape on the topside of track in a particular place but maybe I need to make that tape cover more area as I still get bad rattles when roof is closed.

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[Moments]

Originally Posted by Doru

Panoramic roof deconstruction, as per this forum.

Panorama sunroof repair Part 1:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXpDcy8C56Y

Panorama sunroof repair Part 2:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqmmFf9gARM

Panorama roof mechanism assembly:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDhEJvqQXo4

And another set of instructions:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EXUxdirwino

This is a great post - thank you!

I've got the rear glass sticking in the vent position, temporarily fixed by removing the glass panel and getting some grease on the rails then forcing the wedges to the back of the car. The system will re-initialise (hold the button with ignition in 2) with the rear glass removed.

The emergency tool is really hard to rotate, so the roof mechanism is under significant load. Watching a video of a stuck panoramic roof on another BMW (the mechanisms are very common) that roof was much easier to move with the tool. So mine is on the way out, I think.

Having read through the ~30 TIS documents for the fix, and studied the videos posted here, the sunroof cassette repair doesn't concern me. So I've ordered the rear mechanism from my local dealer (£109) and will start the removal process on Friday. The hard bit seems to be getting the headliner out - a task that's always looked intimidating to me - but a quick survey of the car suggests it's just time consuming.

Once I see what's bad with my roof I'll consider getting the front mechanism as well if it looks like it needs it. That's twice the price of the rear mech. I expect to be ordering more parts as my track record of preserving aged BMW plastic fittings isn't great!

More later this week.

[Moments]

Having had some time yesterday evening I enjoyed the sunshine and removed the roofliner. Very straightforward job.

The sunroof cassette is out now. It was relatively easy to move the pyros for side airbags and drop this out but there were a few snags with how the wiring had been routed.

It's pretty clear that the rear mechanism has jammed with dirt - it's like grinding paste when moving it along the track. The front mechanism is largely OK but the plastic components have started to crack and disintegrate. I've stripped one side and stopped now to order the necessary mechanisms; I can see the front part of the other side is also breaking in places so that's shot too.

The sacrificial plastic pieces for the rear mechanism just shattered on removal, that's probably indicative of how bad this stuff gets in time (12 years in this case).

I'll clean up the tracks and parts to practice re-assembly during the evenings, then grab the parts on Saturday and fix it all up.

When done I'll post the pictures and information of the main snags that nobody tells you about when you want to pull the sunroof out.