anyone installed the pano repair kit?

[mikes123]

Well please be the hero and post some pics and tips when you do it so maybe more of us can DIY it when the time comes.

[mcurcio1989]

^ I'll do my best I enjoy writing DIY's but i hat taking pictures. I'll try to take enought that I can convey the process.

I'll also try and relay what I find as far as broken components so that people can know what parts they should buy.

[mcurcio1989]

Big update here - here is my diy on the pano roof repair kit - don't do it lol. The thing is that after taking this apart i realize that it isn't wear that breaks these things it is just that their is a million moving parts that are all plastic and very under built. If anything cause this thing to hang up (there are countless ways that can happen) then the parts will break and then the whole thing starts self destructing. The kits are expensive and if you mess up one piece your sol. It take forever to get things in place and the odds off messing something up or breaking something are very high. It is a gamble.

I got the parts and removed the pano on saturday night. I don't think I'm going to write a real thorough diy for this because it is so involved and complicated and there are so few people that will ever actually do it. The problem is that if you have to repair this it means that things had broken and were not functioning properly. This thing is like an automatic transmission, it is very difficult to understand how it is working if you have a bunch of broken parts. That said if all that is broken on yours is the rear window - that is fairly easy to fix once you get it out. on a 1-10 scale 1 being airing tires and 10 being rebuilding an AT I would put the rear window at 4, the main glass at 8 and the headliner at 8. The headliner is more simple than the main glass but it is a bunch of small loosely held together pieces of plastic that want to self destruct and are not very logical to assemble.

Removing the headliner is fairly easy I thought. Dropping the pano is also very easy. All you have to do is disconnect the wires and water lines going to it and then disconnect the side curtain air bag canister in the rear (you can just unbolt it and let it hang without unplugging it. I try to avoid unplugging air bags whenever possible as it can get costly. Then unbolt all of the 10mm head bolts around the perimeter. Leaving two in the very front and two in the very rear. These bolts have washer that hold them to the assembly so they willl spin and not come out. Leave them in and don't try to pull them out. Now raise the two front seats all the way up and adjust the headrests to it is up against the sunroof holding it up. The back seats should be up as well. Undo the two bolts in the front and let it rest on the seats. Undo the two bolts in the rear and then drop it down onto the rear seats (this is the light end. Now you can lower the front seats and walk it back and the eventually lower the rear seats and you can walk the whole assembly down very easily with one person. I chose to do this rather than taking the glass out first. It is easy to manage once you get it out of the vehicle and i didn't want to mess with taking the glass out from inside the vehicle and losing the bolts.

If anyone want to take on repairing this honestly just pm me and I can explain it over the phone. Bottom line is once it it out everything slide out the rear and you can pretty much just take on whichever kit you have as they are somewhat separate but do overlap some. For me trying to get the headliner together was by far the hardest due to a lot of uncertainty. The main glass I knew what I had to do it was just a PIA to get things in place. The main and rear glass aren't really able to destruct to a point where you have no idea how it is going on. The whole sliding mechanism on the main comes out together and as long as you keep it together you can put your new stuff together looking at that. By far the hardest part is getting the cable portion for the main glass attached to the sliding assembly. There are a lot of little things here and there that will hang you up so if someone wants tips pm me. Like I said its not easy and there is no guarantee it will work.

As of now I spent like 12 hours on the project and for some reason mine won't move at all but I think that is because I don't have the headliner hooked up. My assembly would not stay together and a small part ended up breaking and I think it is going to be a problem. I had to put the cassette back in so I can use my car. I'm going to take it out and give it another swing but the bottom line is its a PIA. I could do a much better job if I did it again but its definitely a gamble.

[SlickGT1]

ahahah. lol.

Put some details on the hangups that you had.

What was the problem with the headliner?

[mcurcio1989]

Well The sliding headliner bit has two pieces that stack when they go back and also can crack in between to vent. So the main cables attach to this fancy carrier that has another set of little cable on it that allow this crack to occur under certain circumstance.There are three plastic pieces that also slide into the track along with the carrier and the metal grate that rides on the track. Those plastic pieces must be in the proper location inbetween the 4 places the carrier mounts on the track and where the metal grate mounts. One of them contains sliding sort of spring that will lock in a couple locations to stop the assembly. thee are these plastic pieces that mount in the track and then the carrier slips onto them but the carrier kept coming unclipped for some reason. The rear section has a little track that this pin runs in from the carrier that pulls it out. There is a plastic stop on the end and one side had broken that off so i need to make something to asct as a stop. Also there is this plastic section of rail at the end and it is damn near impossible to put in.

[mcurcio1989]

The other hang up was that the rear tilt mechanism and the main glass sliding mechanism like to grab each other in random places and just lock up and I have no clue how they release and how I ever even got them to release it just happened eventually.

The other issue is that the sliding mechanism for the main glass is really bulky and clumsy until the glass is attached. It fights you the whole time you are trying to get it into the track and there is a bit that is kind of like a spring and hangs down and catches when you slide it in. then it is super hard to get the cable attached to the sliding mechanism. you have to tweak it to this weird angle and then even after you get it in it is a real trick to get it to slide onto the track once it is together. Once it is all in it still isn't particularly east to move.

[mcurcio1989]

NEED HELP - Does anyone know of any person or shop who has done this at all? I am very close but for some reason the switch is just acting up.

The only issue I have now is that I need to replace 54137128718 which are the plastic sliders that attach to the rear headliner. It is a $10 kit and an easy fix.

I can run everything with the cranks and it functions properly aside from the rear headlienr but then when I plug things in it doesn't like it. Part of it is that there appears to be some kind of interlock between the headliner and the sliding glass. There is a separate motor that drives the headliner and when the headliner is fully retracted the dumb ends of its drive cable push the sliders that drive the diffuser in the front up. Problem is for some reason it thinks mine isn't all of the way back and it keeps trying to run the motor. The only thing I can think is that there is a special position that this thing has to be installed in so that when you move the switch it likes where everything is at originally for it to work properly. . . Or there is something stuck in the track by the diffuser on mine.

Regardless I would really like to talk to someone who has had one of these out before. I think I am very closer. There is just something I am missing.

[mcurcio1989]

Okay I have an offer here - if there is anyone in the northwest Ohio area that has a rear tilt that is broken and wants it fixed I'll volunteer to help you put the kit in. That is the easy one. We can do the main glass to but that isn't as easy. As long as your headliner slides and functions properly I can help.

I want to do this so I can take a look at a functioning sliding headliner assembly and that is going to be the best way to do it. The more I think about this it is pretty do able you just need to know where things go and the order things go in. you only get one chance on some of this stuff. That said I would like to make a DIY for it but I cannot really do that until I understand the process on the headliner a bit. I'm confident mine is going to go back together and work but the problem is it is not cracking (between the two sections) at the right time and I need to figure out why. It is very important that the headliner functions properly because you need it to go through its motions in order to initialize the whole thing.

[SlickGT1]

Damn I wish I could help.

This would benefit a shit load of people.

[mcurcio1989]

I got my sliding parts for the rear headliner bit. I wasn't able to figure out how the crack is supposed to be controlled but I was able to get it initialized. It runs through all of the positions without any popping or binding its just the crack stay open unless it is going back. I put my headliner and everything back in and buttoned her up. I'm pretty pumped to have this thing working. I'm hopeful someone will volunteer to have there rear glass fixed so I can make a good diy and figure out how the headliner bit works.

In the mean time if you want to take on yours feel free to post or pm me. I'd be happy to walk through this with someone over the phone.

BTW - this is how sensitive these things are. A part of the headliner kept derailing and I could not figure out why. Then I realized that the one side was a 1/16" ahead of the other. Literally one kog off on the drive gear causes the whole operation to fall apart. This reiterates. This can be a very doable fix but if you have to find out everything on your own it is a huge undertaking.