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Please tell me you are still making these! I need this badly
Originally Posted by flyboyusa
****** UDPATE 6/20/22 ********
I've updated the material to a stronger carbon filled material that seems to be holding up quite well. I'm using a set on my personal vehicle and also have positive feedback from a number of other testers with some age on theirs installs.
I have a large qty. printed now (after some downtime on my 3D printer). Pricing is $30 per pair of clips (per vehicle side).
Venmo me @davet797 and include your shipping address.
I'm also attaching an install instruction sheet to this post for reference.
Hi all....I recently started to do a DIY lube maintenance on the panoramic sunroof on my C400 and realized that one of the plastic v-shaped guide clips was broken.
After researching this problem, I realized that this is a pretty widespread issue with this OEM sunroof design and many people have reported a similar issue. This ultimately causes road noise and binding during opening/closing.
The published repair involves removing the entire headliner in the vehicle to gain access to the end of the guiderails in order to slide in the replacement clips (a lot of work).
I decided to design a repair-in-place clip to solve this issue. I printed them on my 3D printer out of PLA and installed on my car and it has been in service for about 2 months now without any issue. They are working amazingly well!
The clips will install on the guiderail, then the sunroof yoke will slip down into the grooves, then the retainer inserts will get a dab of superglue and be pressed into place to lock it all in place. Allow the glue to cure for 4 hours before using sunroof.
I was a bit leery that super glue would have enough "guts" to hold up....but it turns out the super glue is actually stronger than the PLA plastic.
Attached are a few pics showing the design.
I'm looking for anyone else who has the broken clip issue and would like to try out my clips? I want some additional feedback on how well they'll hold up with use.
Anyone?
I live in the United States and bought the one from France. They were shipped from France in about 3 days. I received the part about 9 days after they were shipped. I installed it this morning and it worked! You will likely need to adjust the bracket/glass a bit lower on that side. I just loosened the two Torx T25 bolts, moved the glass down about 2mm or so and retightened. Then I closed the sunroof and it fit nearly perfect. The Mercedes spec is that the sunroof sits from between 0 to 2mm above the adjacent fixed glass. Use a credit card the compare the sunroof glass to the fixed piece of glass when the sunroof is closed.
Can't speak to how long the part or sunroof will work. But it did open and close the 4 times I needed it to. It is now in the closed position and I will never use it again.
Thank you to the developer in France who 3D printed this piece. Saved me between $2,000 and $3,500. It is a genius design.
Like everyone in this thread, I'm having the same issue. This thread is really helpful and it's too bad that Mercedes uses the parts that fail for so many people.
Before I buy the replacement recommended in this thread, I picked the broken parts from the rails. Besides the broken plastic pieces, I also picked out one velvet covered rubber piece (labeled 1 in the photos) and two thin rubber gaskets (labeled 2 in the photos). Does anyone know where they should go? I guess the velvet covered piece should to to the end the rail to dampen the impact when the roof is closed?
I have a 2015 w205 c300. Thanks.
EDIT: I figured out that the rubber seal should go on the side of the clip, and apparently I have lost two of them.
I’ve run into the same issue and not willing to spend about $2K to have it fixed. How do I go about trying your clips? What is your feedback on them after a year?
Hello everyone. I'm new here and this just happened to me few days ago. I found broken pieces inside my roof. Do i need to buy any additional part or only this? And did you fix it by yourself without removing the headliner and the whole roof glass???
sorry for my bad english. The dealership quoted me around 2k to fix it which is insane.
$2k doesn’t sound too bad when you consider the possible repercussions of a pano roof flying off at 90mph. This is one of those repairs we insist on doing things correctly when customers ask
Sorry, but a bad design doesn't equate to MB giving a dam about safety when they charge 2K for this repair.
We usually charge about $1500 if the motor doesn’t need replaced (independent). not me who will be sorry when the roof flies off in through a family minivan windshield… I was glad to see the c43 I wanted came with a standard sunroof after having to fix so many of them
Read the title of this thread. The roof does not have to come off to replace the clips.
… nobody was talking about the installation method of these parts. It’s actually a bit scary that the idea of an improper installation method, or the use of inferior materials doesn’t seem to register any sort of refrain in your thought process about repairing the mounting of a large glass panel on your roof. But I digress, this is the same person who says “who cares if it flies off, the manufacturer of my luxury car charges too much to fix it”
I can’t believe you don’t see the irony in this statement.
there’s no irony to be entertained there, it’s just common sense. Your logic is akin to complaining your $4800 aluminum wheels cracked over a pothole, so you want to try the largely untested $250 replica wheel over the same potholes instead. Good luck finding a lawyer to take on your flying sunroof glass case when you tell him the $30 clips didn’t work as well as they should. Hopefully they aren’t able to find this thread where you stated you don’t care about anyone’s safety because your European car costs too much to repair
fwiw I have yet to have any of my sunroof repair jobs come back with issues, using the oem parts and factory repair guidelines. We have a few tricks we use to ensure proper installation and to avoid having to do the job twice. I’m not sure the issue is the plastic clips as much as hasty assembly, and misalignment of the guide rails from the factory. The plastic clips appear to me to be a purposefully weak point in the assembly to avoid glass shattering instances for example. Before leaving Mercedes I was responsible for inspecting the new cars that came in to the dealership. Most often the issues were found on the cars out of the Alabama plant, where most of our w205’s come from
In my opinion the entire array of pano roof cars should have a service campaign to have the sunroof rails and plastic clips inspected for proper alignment and integrity. I also own a 2005 w211 Mercedes that only recently in the last couple of years had a recall for “sunroof glass may fly off the car”. The recall process involved yanking on the sunroof glass, if the glass doesn’t come off then the car is considered good to go. Quite a crude way to test someone’s 15 year old sunroof, but the name of the game is to maximize profits and reduce losses. It seems they’ve decided the pano roof issues are not worth issuing a real recall unfortunately. One of the many reasons I decided to leave Mercedes
Last edited by ctravis595; 08-15-2023 at 06:29 PM.
I managed to sort mine out today.
I bought some A Clips from ebay and modified them by cutting a tiny piece off using a dremel tool so that the roof nut can just slot in to the A clip and then drilling a tiny hole for the pin retainers to keep it in place.
This worked really well, greased up the roof as well.
Problem solved.
Just make sure you 100% know these are the parts needed. I bought them and when i was going to install, found out it was other sliding clips that had cracked inside rails. Gave up on project will buy set of new rails for $350 and have them installed 5 to 6 hours of work.(@$150 per hour ). At one point, have other priorities now.
04-07-2023, 12:21 AM
