Sunroof repair, urQ, others

[steveb@falcon.kla.com (Steven Buchholz)]

Well, I finally got a few things done on the urQ over the weekend, one of 
which was the sunroof.  As most of you know I posted a RFI on the subject 
a couple weeks back ...

The urQ has the manually cranked, rear tilt-up sytle sunroof, but I think 
the actuation mechanism may be similar to the motorized units as well ...

The problem on my car was that the two screws that hold the crank mechanism
to the frame had stripped out, allowing the crank mechanism to rotate freely 
without engaging the spiral wires that drive the tilt mechanism.  To access 
the crank mechanism you need to remove the crank and the plastic cover inside 
the passenger compartment.  The screws that hold the crank mechanism to the 
frame can be accessed from above after the sunroof panel is removed.  The 
screws were long enough to allow me to simply add separate nuts [4mm?] from 
below and tighten everything back up, but I thought I'd pass along a couple 
of other tidbits I learned during the process ...

It is possible to procure a new crank mechanism ... from my poor memory the 
cost @ Carlsen was ~$85.  The new unit will be made out of pot metal as well
and there will still only be two full threads on each screw holding the new 
piece to the frame ...

If you are doing this repair you might want to drop the crank mechanism out 
for inspection.  There is a pinion gear that drives the cables [also avail-
able @ Carlsen for the measly price of $40], which may be worn.  If it is 
you may want to try removing it, inverting it and then re-installing.  

There may be another option for repair that might be completely free (as 
opposed to the $0.50 I spent on a bag of metric nuts :).  On my car, the 
frame appears to have rubber grommets that cover two holes in the frame.  
The crank mechanism had another set of threaded holes in about the same 
location ... and the crank mechanism is actually thicker at this point, 
meaning that there are more threads to hold it together.  If the holes 
line up correctly it may be possible to transfer the grommets to the outer
holes and snug it all back together this way ...

... perhaps I got the word out soon enough that Bob D' can jack the price 
up on his car a couple grand ... ;-)

Steve Buchholz
s_buchho@kla.com
San Jose, CA (USA)

... my next project ... fixing the '88 5k's sagging visors ... I'm pretty 
sure I'll be able to put together a procedure to fix this one too ...