I've searched the forums and read some other peoples' woes with their sunroof... mine doesn't seem to quite fit with the others though.

The roof was working fine just yesterday. It's never behaved oddly, made unusual noises, etc. Yesterday I closed it up using the remote.

This morning I came out to my car, hopped in and started it up. I got half-way up the street and decided to open the shade at least, so I pushed back the button... nothing happened. "WTF?" I'm thinking. I figure okay, maybe it's something flukey. I run some errands, make a few stops. When I get back into my car and fire it back up, I try again. Nothing. No matter what direction I push the button, nothing happens, nor is there any indication that it's _trying_ to do anything. No noise from the roof's motor. I even tried opening it with the remote, nothing.

I'm a little agitated at this point. Just last week I had to take it in to get the stabilizer bushings replaced at 70k miles, barely a year after I had the control arm bushings replaced.

I looked for a fuse but at least judging by the table in the fusebox, there isn't one. My power windows work fine. I really can't believe that the motor would have just up and completely died mysteriously overnight. Any ideas?

 

Check the manual. I think there's a process to "resynchronize" the room (or some similar tech term).

 

I tried this, but it didn't seem to work. I forget exactly what the manual had me do but basically it was along the lines of holding the switch forward for 1 second, then back for 1 second after it fully opens. The problem is that neither the roof nor the roof shade opens. They won't move at all, and don't seem to make any indication that they're trying to either (e.g., no noise from the sunroof's motor when I hit the switch). I'm trying to come up with other ideas as to things to check.

 

Okay, here's a weird one for you.

So I'm driving along the highway yesterday. All of the sudden I notice my COMAND goes into night mode. Strange, because it's a bright sunny day out and I'm nowhere near a bridge or tunnel. Then I notice the instrument cluster screen flash something real quick before going back to the trip statistics, and the red "SRS" light blinking on for a moment -- it was on for literally only a second or two. Then, all back to normal. So I notice at the bottom right corner of my display it shows the little cascaded box icon -- means there's some fault it caught, so I go to the malfunction section. "Visit workshop, display faulty". Well, everything looked fine.

I don't know what caused me to do this, but I had tried to open the sunroof again a couple days prior with still no luck. For the hell of it, I reach up and press the switch... the sunroof shade opens. So I wait until I get to my destination (so I don't cause an accident messing with my sunroof), and sure enough the sunroof appears to function fine now.

So I shut off the car and took care of my errands, since then neither the display nor the sunroof has acted up in any way.

I pose a question to you: WTF? Heh. This has been very strange.

 

I have posted on this issue and conducted a search of posts and the list of TSBs. We are continuing to have a problem with the shades on the panorama roof. It seems we have had Greenway Mercedes in Houston "repair" it at least four times. The problem is that the button for opening the shades and the roof opens both normally. Then it seems that we hit a small bump in the street (not a large chuck hole!) and the fun starts over. The button will only open the shades a little bit at a time and then the shades will get stuck open. Does anyone have any ideas about what is going on or on ways to repair this problem for the longer term? Thanks.

 

WHOA these come with panorama sunroof?

 

Here's where posting model and year of your car in your sig saves us all the time of asking that very question.
But with 70K miles, sounds like you might be in the early W203 club, like me.

People have had problems like this, random electrical wild wierd stuff (displays lighting up like Christmas tree's, errouneous errors) when the battery is about to die. Don't wait till it actually is gone. Too bad the computer isn't smart enough to suggest checking the battery.

Your battery, when it dies, does one of 2 things; Becomes a giant resistor,
with electrical chararcteristics, well out of range of normal, creating additional load on the electrical system, and sucking juice away from places it's needed, or...
Other times, Some batteries, will fuse the plates, and go the other way and become 0 ohms, a straight short, and cook everything. Especially if they've gone dry.

In either case, based on other threads it's a bad thing, resulting in damage to electical components, and the alternator. Actually just happened on my folks
Ford Escort even. No warning, battery went dead, cooked the alternator.
Your stealer will charge you $1000 for an alternator. Likely you could get it rebuilt yourself for less than 100 bucks at an Auto electic shop. Or, hopefully like other Bosch alts. if has an easily replaceable brush module, the thing that goes wrong with alts. If they short, it usually the diodes. Next time I'm at the dealer I need to look at the 'fiche to see the purty pic'ter of the alt to see if that part exist, and replace it a a maint item.

My car was built Dec. 2001. Purchased by me, Jan. 2002.
It's Oct. 2006.
Original battery. NP so far....but how long can it go?
I hear there's a way to have it tested?
Also, it's not maintenance free, but you'll find that MBZ dealers,
don't bother to add water. Nor did any of the 3 different dealers that I've had service my car, bother to clean the contacts, which also can create gremlins.

 

Actually it these guys....mechanics by day....
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