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.