2005 ML350 Sunroof Adventure: Any chance of getting it fully closed?
07-24-2024, 08:23 PM
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2005 Mercedes ML350
2005 ML350 Sunroof Adventure: Any chance of getting it fully closed?
Strap in guys because this one's a doozy. Bought a 2005 ML350 last year that came with a bad battery. Replaced the battery, which helped not needing to jump start the vehicle on every startup. The sunroof was acting weird right from the test drive. It would only open and close vertically in the back, and not move at all horizontally. In the middle of this, I took the vehicle on a few long drives, so the battery was nicely juiced up. After fiddling with the sunroof controls on a couple of occasions, it finally started opening and closing horizontally on its rails. Not content with leaving well enough alone at this point, I kept trying to open the sunroof horizontally as much as it could go. During the last attempt, the sunroof retracted unnaturally deeply inside the roof and then wouldn't budge when I tried to close it up. No matter how long or hard I pressed the switch in either horizontal direction, the sunroof would only move a fraction of an inch in either direction before coming to a dead stop.
It was at that moment that I made the first of my two colossal f*ck-ups. Instead of taking a deep breath and consulting the manual, I grabbed a pair of very long pliers and started pulling on the headliner fabric under the sunroof in order to move the glass sunroof. What happened next after some intense tugging was that the headliner fabric popped loose from under the glass sunroof. Instead of being dragged along with the glass sunroof, the headliner was now able to freely shut all the way while the glass sunroof above it was still stuck in place.
After that happened, I finally consulted the manual and found the procedure for manually opening and closing the sunroof. The procedure called for a special tool that MB included with the car; I looked around the car but couldn't find it (I would find it later). The procedure involved popping a cover panel in the front dome lamps, inserting the MB tool into a hole, and then pushing and rotating the tool. I substituted the MB tool with a properly sized Allen key and started rotating it clockwise to close the sunroof. If you will remember, at this point, the headliner has been pulled clear of the glass sunroof and is sitting closed. That means I can't see whether the procedure is working and the glass sunroof is sliding forward or not. So I got a buddy to observe the glass sunroof while standing on the right running board. My buddy told me that the glass sunroof was starting to slowly slide forward which made me ecstatic. As the glass sunroof crept closer and closer to closing completely, I sensed that the resistance in the mechanism was increasing. My buddy, being unaware of this, kept prodding me to keep turning the Allen key because we were almost there.
Ignoring my instinct and being egged on by my buddy, I kept turning the Allen key with more and more torque. What that did was that it made the sunroof mechanism fight against the out of position headliner. During normal operation, the sunroof mechanism would drag the headliner behind the glass sunroof at a certain distance. However, because I had pulled the headliner out of position, the relative positions of the glass sunroof and the headliner were now inversed. The resistance from the mechanism kept steadily increasing, but I kept torqueing the AIlen key without pause.
It was during those moments that I made my second colossal f*ck-up. After I had applied a certain level of torque to the Allen key, the mechanism stopped moving the sunroof, at which point I knew that I had probably stripped it. After that point, rotating the Allen key in the other direction didn't get the glass sunroof to move to open either.
The situation right now is that the glass sunroof is about half a foot open and the headliner is all the shut. I filled the half foot gap above the headliner with a styrofoam piece cut to size, and then taped up the whole sunroof as best as I could. However, because there are uneven spots in the sunroof, water pools in the front left side of the sunroof and drips down into the driver side carpet. As is common with Mercedes of this generation, the sunroof drain holes on my vehicle are out of commission. On the plus side, I found the MB tool for this procedure stowed deep in the trunk of my vehicle.
If you have had the patience to keep reading this far, thank you very much. This was without a doubt the most embarrassing episode of my amateur wrenching career. At this point, I am wondering if there is anything remotely possible I could do to get my glass sunroof shut all the way. And if not, what could I do to level out the sunroof and fix it at least so that the water doesn't leak into the cabin. Thanks for reading!
It was at that moment that I made the first of my two colossal f*ck-ups. Instead of taking a deep breath and consulting the manual, I grabbed a pair of very long pliers and started pulling on the headliner fabric under the sunroof in order to move the glass sunroof. What happened next after some intense tugging was that the headliner fabric popped loose from under the glass sunroof. Instead of being dragged along with the glass sunroof, the headliner was now able to freely shut all the way while the glass sunroof above it was still stuck in place.
After that happened, I finally consulted the manual and found the procedure for manually opening and closing the sunroof. The procedure called for a special tool that MB included with the car; I looked around the car but couldn't find it (I would find it later). The procedure involved popping a cover panel in the front dome lamps, inserting the MB tool into a hole, and then pushing and rotating the tool. I substituted the MB tool with a properly sized Allen key and started rotating it clockwise to close the sunroof. If you will remember, at this point, the headliner has been pulled clear of the glass sunroof and is sitting closed. That means I can't see whether the procedure is working and the glass sunroof is sliding forward or not. So I got a buddy to observe the glass sunroof while standing on the right running board. My buddy told me that the glass sunroof was starting to slowly slide forward which made me ecstatic. As the glass sunroof crept closer and closer to closing completely, I sensed that the resistance in the mechanism was increasing. My buddy, being unaware of this, kept prodding me to keep turning the Allen key because we were almost there.
Ignoring my instinct and being egged on by my buddy, I kept turning the Allen key with more and more torque. What that did was that it made the sunroof mechanism fight against the out of position headliner. During normal operation, the sunroof mechanism would drag the headliner behind the glass sunroof at a certain distance. However, because I had pulled the headliner out of position, the relative positions of the glass sunroof and the headliner were now inversed. The resistance from the mechanism kept steadily increasing, but I kept torqueing the AIlen key without pause.
It was during those moments that I made my second colossal f*ck-up. After I had applied a certain level of torque to the Allen key, the mechanism stopped moving the sunroof, at which point I knew that I had probably stripped it. After that point, rotating the Allen key in the other direction didn't get the glass sunroof to move to open either.
The situation right now is that the glass sunroof is about half a foot open and the headliner is all the shut. I filled the half foot gap above the headliner with a styrofoam piece cut to size, and then taped up the whole sunroof as best as I could. However, because there are uneven spots in the sunroof, water pools in the front left side of the sunroof and drips down into the driver side carpet. As is common with Mercedes of this generation, the sunroof drain holes on my vehicle are out of commission. On the plus side, I found the MB tool for this procedure stowed deep in the trunk of my vehicle.
If you have had the patience to keep reading this far, thank you very much. This was without a doubt the most embarrassing episode of my amateur wrenching career. At this point, I am wondering if there is anything remotely possible I could do to get my glass sunroof shut all the way. And if not, what could I do to level out the sunroof and fix it at least so that the water doesn't leak into the cabin. Thanks for reading!
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