W123 300TD Dog/Cargo Net Won't Automatically Retract!
 

My dog/cargo net on my w123 300TD wagon won't retract. The cover that latches onto the rear hatch door retracts fine but the actual net that attaches to the roof won't automatically retract. I have to manually roll it up and it sucks because it's really tough to get your fingers in there to do it. Obviously there is some sort of spring or something in the there that broke or came undone. Usually I would have no problem cracking this open to take a look but it's not held together with screws but with rivets and I'm not super comfortable breaking those open and possibly damaging the whole thing. Unfortunately not a lot of info about these cargo nets on the internet. Has anyone else dealt with this before?

No one? I kind of figured this one wasn't going to get much of a response being that the cargo net is fairly rare.

Not that this reply is any help but I had the same thing happen on a 124 wagon of mine, except it was the vinyl pull out cover not the dog net that wouldn’t retract. I fiddled with it for months and short of destroying the entire thing I couldn’t find any way to access the internal parts of the mechanism. Ended up just leaving it in the wagon when I sold it. Sorry not any help, good luck.

If you want to fix it your gonna have to figure out a way to open it... U open it see what's broken and assess a solution from there.

I don't think you need to researxh about this specific cargo net. You need to research about how to remove rivits from fragile trim pieces and how a pull to retract mechanism works.

Right and normally I would have no problem doing that. The only reason I'm hesitating to do that is because of the rarity of the cargo net that I have. The cargo nets in general are already rare but mine is even more because it's Moss Green which I have never seen before. If it was palomino (which is still rare), I would have no problems attempting to pop it open because I know other ones are out there if I damaged it beyond repair. At the end of the day though, I will most likely need to do just that and attempt to pop open those rivets and give it a shot but I figured I would ask to see if anyone else had any tips/experience first.

Yup, that's what I'm afraid of.