Ran to the junkyard to pick up a gently used sunroof motor. Compared to what I had before, this one was brimming with youthful enthusiasm. However, in the process of removing the old motor, I bent the mounting bracket slightly. Thinking that my plier bending job was good enough, and installed the newly used motor and tested it out.

Problem is that the teeth in the gear caught only one of the cables, and tweaked my sunroof out of alignment. I spent a good hour or so trying to re-adjust it manually, but being off slightly I’d think would cause a sealing issue (and it also bugged me a little).

I plan to remove the entire sunroof unit tomorrow, and see if manhandling it a little to see if there is a point where the sunroof is reset (thinking it is in the full open position).

If all else fails, I’ll pull a unit out of the junkyard, but I don’t want to deal with footing that bill if I can avoid it.

Any tips? I’d like to avoid breaking it further

 

I had sunroof issues in a '98 I had. The wear interface between the motor teeth and the cables seemed to be the issue in mine. I experimented with resetting the cables and could get it to either completely open or completely close but could not get the full range because of the wear in the original interface position. I did pull some cables from another unit in the local salvage yard, but they didn't look any better than mine so I didn't try replacing them. I settled on getting the unit to fully close and seat and disconnected the drive motor to avoid ever getting it in a partial position again and left it there.

Working on these is a huge pain. I took the entire headliner out so I had easy access to the entire roof unit. This is how I was able to experiment with altering cable lengths. and resetting and moving the glass panel. There are quite a few small and fragile parts in the slide mechanics so you need to be very careful working on them. It doesn't take much effort to snap a plastic slide pivot. that will put the whole thing off kilter.