PeachParts Mercedes-Benz Forum - View Single Post

rcounts · #7 05-29-2008, 01:17 AM

Well, as it turns out I have the exact same problem as the picture posted above - only a little more extreme.

I used two butter knives to gently pry the sunroof headliner panel down at the front until I could get my fingers in on top of it. A little bit of a tug and the clips popped loose one at time. Once all the clips were loose I was able to bow the front edge down and slide it right back out of the way.

At that point I could see that the shell had indeed slipped out of the sleeve and they were misaligned nearly two inches.

I unbolted the cable bracket at the front and removed the two 8 mm bolts ate each end of the crossbar, and lowered it down. I pulled the cable retaining clip out of the bracket and slid the bracket, sleeve, and crossbar off the end of the cable. I was then able to open the sunroof far enough to remove the sunroof headliner panel.

Next I pulled the cable all the way out of the shell and examined it. It had a pretty good z-bend in the cable but I was able to straighten it up pretty well. Several of the 1/2" pieces of clear plastic and the white plastic "beads" on the cable were a bit chewed up - about 3"-4" of cable length worth. I cut and removed the damaged ones, then took an old piece of motorcycle clutch cable I had lying around and stripped the plastic off it, and cut off a 4" piece of the coiled flat-wire shell. I grabbed the two ends of the 4" piece and stretched it to almost twice its length to open up the spaces between the coils.

Then I took the piece of shell and spiral wound it around the section of cable that was missing the plastic sheathing and beads - which is the same section that still had a couple of very slight kinks - caused by the shell/sleeve misalignment. It was REALLY hard to get it around the cable and when it was done it ended up being just a tad smaller in diameter than the plastic beads, and just a little stiffer than the main length of the cable.

I started to try to put the cable back into its shell, but it would only go back in there about a foot or so before it stoped and I couldn't get it to go in any farther. The "geared" part of the cable seems too stiff to navigate around the bends in the sheath very well. I'm wondering if I might have better luck running a piece of thin strong wire in from the trunk end of the shell and pulling the cable through?

Anyway my kid had a baseball game that I didn't want to miss, and I had to stop at this point. So I slid the sunroof panel closed and bolted the crossbar back into place. I then wedged a couple of plastic bottle caps in under the rear corners of the sunroof panel (on top of the tracks) just to make sure it stays closed until I get the chance to finish the job. All that is left now is to put it all back together - once I figure out how to get the cable back into its shell. Any helpful tips in this area would be greatly appreciated.