I recently bought a 1997 SL600, 56k miles, my first mercedes,and the hardtop was put on 3-4 weeks ago to come up from florida. It drove like a dream. It has been in my garage since. The battery was turned off so it wouldn't discharge. It started getting warm and now the top won't come off, I took it to mercedes and they said before they could figure what the problem was ...pay 3k to replace soft top controller. The soft top was functioning fine 1 month ago. I, of course, told them I wasn't going to pay 3k for them to guess. My symptoms are, red button stays lit constantly when car is on. Roll bar won't move, the two triagle lights on it's button stay lit as well. There doesn't seem to be any leaks, as their are no stains in my garage. Is there a way to release the hardtop manually? I read in some old post about older cars, so I wouldn't think MB would take this ability away. If anyone can please help at all I sure would appreciate your help.

Congratulations on your SL! Once you get the bugs worked out you will be happy with it. It is possible your hard top was not mounted properly, I think I gave you some pointers in the SL forum. If your roll bar light is on, you didn't mention that on other forum, you should be able to reset it, the manual says you push the switch up and hold for 5 seconds. That will reset your rollbar, and if that is reset then if your windows are synced you should be able to remove your top, unless something else is wrong. I find that usually when something on that car isn't working it is operator problem. I have never had any trouble with my top controls except when someone did something wrong or something was out of sync. The computer has to know where everything is in order to proceed, that includes the windows, the rollbar, the gear, the ignition switch, the engine can not be running for hard top removal, lots of things, and any little problem, it will not work. Good luck, let us know how it goes!
B

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Brian W. Heitman

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did you boost the car and blow the ubit also the dealer was the star diagnoses where they read the codes, was the code soft top control module, after making sure top is closed properly manually if you erase the codes and try to work the roof if the code comes back you probably
need the unit

no there was not boost to the car, I got the hardtop off yesterday, manually. Dealer told me it couldn't be done, but it was very simple. And just to be sure I had the battery checked out...It needed to be replaced. Which I believe was my main problem. Is their a way to clear the codes without taking to the dealer? They don't seem to have any "experts" there.

For starters, if you don't already have the operators manual, get one. It is a wealth of information; it shows you step by step how to manually remove the hard top and soft top instructions.

Most "stealers" see your car and assume you are made of money so that is the reason they probably told you to part with it; especially a SL 600.

Good luck.

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'94 SL500 Tourmaline Green, 120K miles as of February 27, 2005.

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If the battery was "shut off", ie disconnected, you should just need to resynchronize the power windows and the top will then work correctly. I can't believe the dealer didn't catch this simple problem!
Gilly

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