Common Sunroof Woes?

[ioverholt@hotmail.com (Ian Overholt)]

My biggest woe was a lot of the screws holding the rails to the body were 
stripped.  I'm talking the swedged in nuts for the side rails, a few sheet 
metal screws along the front center rail and one of the big screws near the 
back of the side rails!  I still haven't replaced the sheet metal screws 
with the next size up in an attempt to get metal with them.  For the screws 
that go to the swedged in nuts, I pulled the headliner down enough so I 
could install a big washer and nut underneath for the screw to thread into.  
This required putting the headliner back in with the sunroof pieces in the 
way, which SUCKED.
The biggest problem with sunroofs is that gunk builds up on the cables which 
causes them to resist movement.  Eventually, they get stiff enough that you 
strip them with the crank.  Replacing the cables involves removing the whole 
shebang.  The new cables do not work well on the old rails for some reason.  
I tried new cables on old rails outside of the car and there was a lot of 
resistance to movement.  I would recommend using the new rails with the new 
cables.
The cloth piece is obsolete.  You cannot buy a new one.  With the piece out 
of the car, it is fairly easy to clean with any upolstery cleaner.  My big 
Doh! of the job was noticing (as I reconnected the spring to the rear flap) 
that the super-mega strong spring had nearly pulled its way through the 
headliner piece.  If I had noticed this when I had that piece out of the 
car, I could have easily drilled a new hole!  I still can drill a new hole 
with it in the car, but I have to remove the roof panel.  When the spring 
pulled the last little bit of the metal away the next day after I had 
reassembled the sunroof, it pulled the fabric all askew.  So I will have to 
reglue the fabric on the flap.

Whew, I didn't even write as much as I could have.  The sunroof is pretty 
trinky.  I was majorly bummed to find so many buggered screws.  Some idiot 
mechanic (probably at the VW dealer sadly) really screwed up my car by 
stripping all those screws!



Ian Overholt
'88 16v
'78 Champagne Edition


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