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2013 Porsche 911 Carrera 4S, 2004 SL55, 2012 Lexus IS250, 2021 Toyota Highlander
Vario roof leak - replace cylinder
Hi all...
Welp... It finally happened. I noticed that the roof cylinder is leaking and I now have those bubbles on the trim above the passenger door window. I'm guessing that means that the cylinder in the roof section (top lock cylinder?) is leaking. Is my assumption correct even though the leak showed up on my passenger seat by the passenger window? This now explains some hydraulic fluid I found on the passenger seat about two weeks ago. I chalked it up as an accident because I had been working on the door earlier.
I've done the trunk cylinder and that one wasn't too bad. How does this one compare to the trunk lid cylinder in terms of replacing it?
The front latch should be repaired with a German u-cup ring seal instead of an o-ring. The shaft is held in the cylinder by a springy metal ring installed in a grove. To keep the passenger door upper seal from getting hydraulic fluid ripples, fix ASAP. The latch cylinder and roll bar lock pawls can be renewed with new u-cup ring seals. The other cylinders have a connector at the end of the shaft secured with a pin that must be drilled out.
The biggest issue is that the line routing is complex because it has to wrap around the roof hinge, so there is a fair amount of work to remove covers and feed the lines thru. Cabriolet Hydraulics makes couplers so that you can cut the lines a few inches back from the cylinder, send it in for rebuilding, and then reinstall with the couplers. I don't really like the idea of adding potential leak points, but they seem to work fine for most people.
Another option is to get a new or rebuilt cylinder, remove the rod like you would to do the o-ring fix, and just interchange the entire rod assembly. I have seen some rebuilt rod assemblies for sale, but they are not easy to find.
2005 R 230 SL350 (M112 3.7). Sold the 1966 W113 230SL recently
To the best of my knowledge, the only line that is under constant pressure is #100 for the roll bar. As long as you do not open or close the roof there should be no additional spill on the roof liner. Speaking of which, I would pull the roof liner down and clean up the spill up there. There's bolts way up front and the rest is just clips (many of which you'll probably have to re-glue afterwards). Of course you're in the predicament that all that does require pump action, or you follow the manual closing instruction in the opposite order - definitely a two man operation.
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Vario roof leak - replace cylinder
