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The sunshade is missing for some reason on the front portion of my pano roof. The little arms are there and move, but there is not fabric attached. Is it a major job to put the sunshade in?
2007 S600, 2007 Chrysler 300 SRT8, 2000 C5 Corvette, 2017 Mustang GT, 2023 300C, and a 2019 Lincoln
The sunshade itself is a roll of alcantara and the motor advances it to close. I suspect yours has come off the roller and is probably inside the roof but below the glass. What happens when you hit the slide button to close the sunshade? Any noise? Typically the plastic gears on the motor strip out and it will make a stacotto machine gun noise and not close. In your case, it looks like the cloth is not on the end of the roller. Also there are two motors one for the glass and one for the sunshade. You might as well replace both if you decide to go into the roof. Ask me how I know.... You have to remove the headliner from the front.
While you are doing this, presuming you decide to deal with it, there is a special Mercedes lube you need to use on the pano rails. You can't use anything else. It is like $400 a jar from Mercedes!!!!!!! So some guy on the ebay is buying the jar from Mercedes and putting a dab in a little container for like $20. And you only need a little but it has to be this stuff or your pano catches all kinds of dirt. Not lithium based. Some BS Mercedes formula, but you definitely need to use it. Not maintaining a pano properly including this stupid lube costs about $2000 to repair at the dealer. I am now a believer.
Thanks for the great reply. I had the chattering when I got the car, so I got a motor and pulled the front part of the headliner to replace the motor. Now the roof works fine. I at first assumed there wasn't supposed to be a sunshade for the front, since there wasn't a separate switch for it. Then I noticed when I hold the close button, there's a piece on each side that slides forward which should have some fabric attached. I can't see how the roller at the back was supposed to work though or how to fix it. The electrics and motor seem to operate fine; there's just nothing for the moving pieces to pull on.
2007 S600, 2007 Chrysler 300 SRT8, 2000 C5 Corvette, 2017 Mustang GT, 2023 300C, and a 2019 Lincoln
I suppose the previous owner removed the sunshade (why I cannot understand!!) but are you sure the cloth material is not actually on that rear roller or can you just not see it from the front. You probably really need to remove the under-roof headliner completely at both the front and the rear (a major pain) to see if you have a sunshade or whether the previous owner did something really dumb.
And if you are going to all that trouble, I would recommend you replace all the motors (there is one at both the left and right up front), clean the pano tracks, lube it all up with the expensive stuff, and then restore the headliner. I had to also clean mine since my hands were just a touch dirty after the lube job and I left smudges on the headliner. A little goof-off cleaner did the trick. Whenever you hear that machine gun rat-a-tat-tat sound on the pano or the sunshade, you need to replace the motors mostly because you cannot buy the little plastic gears. I have heard of one owner that used 3 D Printing to make the plastic gears. But I don't think you can buy them.
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