Chalk up another pano roof trouble and fix
 

I always swore that I was gonna fix the pano roof the RIGHT way when it went south on me. "Dremel? PLEASE!" I used to say.

Yeah? Well our 3500 mile NE road trip starts on Saturday and my shizzle just went fizzle yesterday. After I found the 2 part YouTube description from someone with an E70, I took to (at least) getting the rear portion closed. That was pretty damn easy. My Chevy tool is going to get a new badge, soon.

Once I screwed around with initialization and had to hammer it BACK in again, I decided that the redneck fix was the one for me. Securing, powering, and positioning myself and the Dremel took longer than trimming off the piece on both sides. :rolleyes:

Once complete, the rear portion stays just where it should- in order not to get stuck- while the front operates up/down/ and open/close with zero issues. :thumbup:

Unfortunately, some very sudden and very dramatic family medical issues raised up as I was working. We may not get t o do the trip. And that's OK. We've got one less sunroof fish to fry. We may have replaced it with a ton more to work through. If only a Dremel would help with those. :(

Let me know the details of the "fix" as I am in the same boat. I just bumped it back into closed position and pulled the fuse as I NEVER open that damn things anyway.

My background was the sunroof opened on its own one AM spirited drive and would not close or re-initialize itself regardless of attempts.

There are a couple of small triangles you need to cut off with a Dremel, its pretty easy but I would only use a Rotary cutter to do it as its precision stuff. This is a great video on it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqmmFf9gARM&t=302s

I would add, whilst you are in the roof, get some NEW felt anti rattle tape and replace all the old felt... mine started to rattle then replacing all the felt it was quiet again.

Great video- it is exactly the one I used after Part I got the rear glass back down.

Good suggestions. I did not add the felt.

I did not find the work precision at all. I hope that means I didn't screw something up. It is a fairly thin piece of plastic and the rotary cutter snipped it in less than 30 seconds for both sides.

why not just unscrew the rear pannel's two torx bolts from the sides instead of what you did? seems faster adn provides same result, no?

https://xoutpost.com/928425-post13.html

:dunno: Didn't know it was an option! :rofl:

Used one of those "Renovator" style vibrating tools with a plastic-cutting blade on mine...good firm hand control is required during the surgery, but it was pretty easy - like a knife thru butter in fact! All done in about 10 minutes.
As the OP implies, it's a cheap and easy fix, and gets the main roof panel working properly again.

Sorry, I am ham-fisted, when I say precision, I guess I am saying, "Don't just hit it with a big hammer!" as I use myself as a benchmark. I took maybe 1 minute of concentration each side to remove the small plastic triangle and make sure I didnt touch the runner with the blade then I rubbed some motorcycle chainwax on the runners (dont use WD40 its too thin) and it was so much easier to close. As said, I have no patience at all so a minute with the Dremel was like an hour for me. After all the work I got the house hoover out and hoovered all the rubbish out of the gutters as well. Tried to do a good job on it then 3 weeks later I was back in the roof refitting all the anti rattle tape thinking to myself... why the heck didnt I do this at the time of doing the repair. Anyways.....

I am probably one of the few people outside of the dealerships to actually repair these pano roofs with the new updated plastic parts (there are 3 separate repair kits) that replace your old broken ones. It's like brain surgery but it can be done and it won't break again. The updated parts are actually different from the original ones. Chalk it up to a bad design to start with. I have done 5 or 6 of these at this point. It takes the better part of a day (focusing and without breaks) to do the job. I do have a spare working cassette for sale but haven't listed it in the classifieds since I figured someone local would need it one day. I have also considered doing the job for people for a reasonable fee if they come to New York with the repair kits, but haven't acted on that since working on cars is a hobby for me. I just think it's a shame that people practicallly junk their E53s because of these pano roofs. It's a fixable problem but so few people want to touch the job.

After finding out what my indy would charge to repair my pano ($4000) I slid the part forward that was holding the rear glass up and pulled the fuse. I wasn't using it anyway. If I decided I wanted to use it I'd go the cut off the tabs route.