Babalouie's 911 - start on p7

[VE Safari]

Porsche sign is not equidistant between clock and ceiling. OCD me is bothered by this.

[Babalouie]

It is the same distance from the clock as the Hako pic below

[260BC]

That's fo 'sho.

Hako: 2 bushes in gearshift linkage (one of which is $2)
911: 12 bushes

Now you get it, German engineering, making things complicated for the sake of it Glad you are enjoying it all anyway, that's what it's all about

[Babalouie]

When I bought the car, one of the comments on the pre purchase inspection was that the sunroof operation was noisy. And so it was. When you opened or closed it, it was to the accompaniment of lots of oldschool-sounding mechanical whirring noises. But it worked just fine. For a few months

Then one day it seized. Thankfully it seized in the closed position, and when you tried to open it, you could see that the left side would try to open by about half an inch, but the right hand side was resolutely stuck. This seemed a clear case of the cable on the right side having snapped, so I ordered a new set of cables and a few other bits and pieces so that we could do a proper overhaul :D

The first step is to unzip this mysterious zipper at the back of the headlining. First I sprayed some interior-detailer cleaning fluid onto the 20yr old zipper to lubricate it. And when it's opened, you see the foam pad that insulates the cabin from the whirrings of the sunroof motor.


And when the foam pad is out of the way, it reveals the sunroof motor (that "Rockwell Golde" thing on the left) which goes into like a rubber universal joint, and then into a gearbox which drives the sunroof cables.


Unscrewing the gearbox and flipping it down reveals the cables, which look to be in good shape. So no stripped teeth here, which was a possible cause of the sunroof getting stuck.


But with the drive gear out of the way, you can now push the sunroof back by hand. Now, this ain't easy, for reasons I'll explain in a moment. It takes a fair bit of effort to push the rear edge of the sunroof down, so that it can slide back a little.


You'll notice that it's really, really tight, but thankfully you only have to move it back a tad.


...just about enough for you to expose the front edge of the sunroof liner, and there is enough of a gap for you to get your fingers in there and unpop the liner from the sunroof panel. It's held in by some metal spring loaded clips.


Once the front edge of the liner is loose, you can slide it back into the roof cavity, to expose the underside of the sunroof. The panel is bolted to the mechanism by 4 bolts that you can see, plus that funny leaf spring looking thing.


First thing you do, is push the sunroof closed again. Doing this might elicit a loud "snap!" sound and then the back of the sunroof goes all floppy, and I'll explain what this is later For now, unclip that little leaf spring looking doohickey from the cable bracket.


Unbolt the rear cable bracket, and slide out the locating shim.


Unbolt the front bracket, and when you're done on both sides, the sunroof panel itself can be lifted out. Careful, it's surprisingly heavy.


Then you unscrew this spacer bar that sits inside the cable tracks. It's necessary to release the air deflector arms.


Then unscrew the air deflector, which just lifts off in one big piece.


Then you undo the cable tracks themselves, and gently wiggle them out. Don't use too much force, the track locate into the back of the roof via these plastic pins, and you don't want to break them.


Once the tracks are out, it reveals the cable and bracket which lives inside. Left side looks just fine and dandy.

[Babalouie]

Right side, as suspected is snapped!


First, let's take a look at the cable mechanism, which is pretty clever. When you open the sunroof, the cable pulls to the left, and it pulls the bracket on the right down. This allows the rear edge of the sunroof to dip down, and slide back into the roof cavity.


But when you close it...the cable pushes the sunroof closed, and then pops that linkage upwards, which makes the rear edge of the sunroof go up and lock in a position that's flush with the roof. This is why the sunroof is so hard to push back by hand...you are actually fighting this linkage in the bracket, which is essentially locking the sunroof in a closed position.


This is also why it might make a loud popping noise when you close the rood by hand, it's the tension on these linkages popping 90 degrees from upright to flat. But now we can put the new cable into the tracks (and you clean the living daylights out of it first of course)


Interestingly, the new cable has a fuzzy felt layer intertwined in it, which wasn't in the original cable. It does make the new cable more of a tight fit in the mechanism tubes, but I figure this might be so that any old gunk or dead bits of old cable in the tubes are pushed out when you install the new cables for the first time. And this, is a good thing


But the problem with the new cable is that the bracket is much bigger than the original one. Too big in fact to fit into the channel in the tracks. The reason I think is because Porsche steadily revised the sunroof design throughout the life of the 911, but the spare part that they carry, is the final version for the 993. A clean solution would be to fit the wider tracks from the 993 too, but that would add $400 to the cost of the overhaul (all these bits were $250 delivered) so most older 911 guys just modify the cables to fit. The older your 911, the more you have to shave off (and I believe impact bumper models have to remove the felt lining or it won't fit at all)


So you file them down by hand until they can slide smoothly in the tracks. There's quite a big size difference between the new and old ones, so you end up taking off quite a bit of metal.


The original cable bracket has a plastic skid on the bottom (you can see in the background that it's pretty trashed) but with the new cable parts, you have to order the skid separately, and the latest ones are a metal piece which clips into place.


Insert the cables into the tracks with plenty of grease and then installation as they say is the reverse of you-know-what.


Part of the overhaul was to replace the little hinges and arms that operate the air deflector. They're quite delicate but not expensive, so I thought it was a good idea to renew them while I was at it. If one of these things snap, it can cause the air deflector to jam the sunroof.


...ready for the sunroof panel to go back on...


I put a nice dab of grease on the gear mechanism before screwing that on, and then refitting the foam pads. I had the sunroof partially open when I refitted the geardrive, so I just measured the distance from the front edge to the edge of the roof, just to make sure the panel isn't crooked before fitting the geardrive again.


Now I'm not going to say that it glides back and forth as silently as a Lexus sunroof, but it is better than it was before, and the more I use it, the smoother it seems to get, so here's hoping that I don't have to do this again for a long while


I reckon this would have been a LOT easier to do while the sunroof was still working, so I really should have obeyed the warning signs and nipped this in the bud before the cable broke.

[Tripper]

great detail as i expect from a Babs post, keep up the good work

[Flem-Ball]

Halfway through i was confused, cause the RX7's sunroof used to go above the roof.... Then i watched the video and it all made sense!

[clutch-monkey]

great detail as i expect from a Babs post, keep up the good work

+1
glad i have no sunroof!

[Shitbreak]

Yup, borderline obsessive compulsive levels of detail. Love it.

[Babalouie]

Yup, borderline obsessive compulsive levels of detail. Love it.

I reckon I'm not putting as much OCD into the restoration, as the crazy germans did put into building it tho

[Boxer]

Nice work,

I take it you research how this all comes apart before you undertake these exercises? Ever worry you are gong to get caught one night not being able to get it all back together for your trip to work tomorrow?
:D

[Babalouie]

Nice work,

I take it you research how this all comes apart before you undertake these exercises? Ever worry you are gong to get caught one night not being able to get it all back together for your trip to work tomorrow?
:D

Funnily enough, I did the sunroof overhaul on Thursday night. The baby was up until about 11.30 so I just planned to carry the box of parts down to the garage, and maybe unzip the headlining for a look-see and plan the attack for Friday night.

Anyway...not long after, more and more stuff got dismantled, and as I knew it was raining on Friday (ie so I can't use the Hako either) the point of no return was passed and I pushed on until 4am Three extra shot coffees at work on Friday and I was barely on the verge of passing out all day

But even by my standards, 911 forums are VERY throrough on documenting DIY projects, even to the point of providing part#s needed. Then there are lots of other resources like the DIY articles at Pelican: http://www.pelicanparts.com/911/911tech_articles.htm

I usually trawl the forums to get an idea of what's involved, and then I order the parts from overseas. Generally it takes a week to arrive, so if you didn't realise that you needed certain parts, then buying last minute parts from Porsche Australia is more expensive. So by the time I put spanner to car, I have a preety decent idea of how long it'll take as I've had a whole week of waiting on parts to think about it.

[Babalouie]

Just arrived today in the mail, 911RS transmission mount


...now to figure out how to get the old one out...

[wagoner]

Just arrived today in the mail, 911RS transmission mount


...now to figure out how to get the old one out...

*waits with anticipation*

:D

[Babalouie]

And in other news, that heater relay seems to have melted again.

Yay for me

I reckon I know the issue now though. The heater blower was running, but very slowly and vibrating like a mofo. So I reckon what's really been happening all along, is that the heater blower is dying, and this has bumped up the current draw...not enough to pop the 30A fuse, but enough to fry the relay again.