davidoneal

About 3 years ago, yes 3 years ago, I replaced all of my soft top hydraulics, along with the switch. After untold hours working and still could not get the told to work, I parked it in my garage with the top down and walked away from it being so frustrated and not having any more time to work on it. Part of my frustration was also that I had a lead in the power steering and transmission was acting up.Well I finally decided to try to work on it again this weekend and seem to have corrected the PW leak and the transmission is running fine.

The remaining issue is still the top not wanting to work correctly. The red light on the dash will not go out and the alarm will go on for a while. For the time being there are no hydraulic leaks and not sure if I messed up the switch when I reinstalled? Also I manually pulled the top back up to see if there was any damage sitting for so long and there is not. I did notice that the back latch that goes into the holes on the passenger does not want to go into the hole. Not sure how it would have been bent unless I did something when I manually pulled up the soft top.

Not sure where to start to work on the top? any thoughts?

MJ50

moved to R129 forum...

Flyboy82

I have a suggestion that may help, disconnect the neg side of your battery for about one hour. This should reset the memory for the top. Also, you can manually lock the tabs by using the special tool you should have in the trunk. The instructions for doing this are in the Owners Manual. As far as manually locking the top to the locks that are located above your windshield, make sure you are turning them in the right direction or you can strip the head of the bolt that locks down the top.
Hope this helps.

cliffyk

The ability to easily lock the bow was eliminated in mid-95. It can still be done but the access panels and pretty red levers were done away with.

To lock the bow you have to pull back the trunk liner panels to get at the locking lever:

left side:


right side:


With the tool on the lever first lift the lever up to make sure the latch is open, then push the bow down into the latch one one side and push the lever down one "click".

On the the other side, lift up to open the latch, then push the bow into the latch and move the lever down two clicks. Return to the first side and move the lever down to the second click--done.

You may need to manually open the latch it it somehow was left locked--it should look like this:



If not use a screwdriver to open it...

Flyboy82

Really great pictures..yes I know all this been there done that several times. no longer have the SL320, wiring harness burned up because Mercedes put lousy insulation on the wiring harnesses 94-96.

So, the car now is in some salvage yard. Have a nice day and thanks for the response...Happy Motoring

SRHsl600

David, did you get your answer?
Anytime the top switch is lite and or the chime is active the roof cycle is not complete, thus some movement cycle or locking cycle has not finished and reported back to the CPU.
for me it has been the latches were not locked but others related the micro switch not contacted. TopHydraulics and Klaus has been the one I would talk with for the sequence needed to get the cycle completed.

Flyboy82

I no longer own the car...thanks to Mercedes Biodegradable wiring harnesses it burned up the harnesses. It's in Happy Salvage Yard now. Insulation crumbled off of them then they touched each other. This happened on the 94-96 Models.

I have a 99 E320 Now.