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Hooray for me. The vario roof cylinder that was leaking is finally fixed and working after more than 2 years of just driving it as a coupe.
But, most of the credit belongs to my son. I grew up working on cars and was very good at doing that when I was young. My dad ran an auto-body repair shop, and I helped him for many years. However, at 74 years old, I am hesitant to do repairs now. My son found a video and ordered some new O-Rings to repair the cylinder. He lives far away, but visited during Thanksgiving, and we managed to remove the cylinder while he was here. We also managed to remove the shaft (?) from the cylinder and saw that the O-Ring was broken. The new O-Rings did not arrive until after he left, so I had to put it all back together. I won't go into all the difficulty I had trying to put it all back together, but it wasn't all that bad considering how bad my health is. Anyway, I replaced the O-Ring and managed to get the shaft back into the cylinder and the "C" clip back in to hold it in place. My wife managed to help me get the headliner back in. I had ordered new fluid and a syringe, and when those things came in, I tilted the reservoir up as much as I could and filled it just over halfway. Honestly, I am not sure how much it needed to be filled, so I just stopped at that point. I re-installed the reservoir and tested it. It did nothing but roll the rear glasses up/down and make a clicking noise. I was pretty disappointed and thought it would never work again. The next day I was walking by the car, and suddenly it hit me - did I close the release valve on the reservoir? I closed that valve, and suddenly the top went right into the trunk like normal. I almost cried. I still had to replace all the parts that I had removed. I spent the next day doing all of that. Honestly I was afraid to close the top before doing that. Once I put it all back together, I took it for a test drive. It was awesome. Maybe the best little drive even though just around my neighborhood. A funny thing happened as I was finishing putting it all back together, a woman walked by and said "Beautiful car. When can I borrow it?". This car is a classic IMO, and is still 100% original, and runs as good as the day I bought it 15+ years ago.
Not sure if it worked, but I tried to include a picture of the cylinder after repaired. Notice the tiny holes (I only need 1 but the first one was not close enough to the "C" clip). We stuck a tiny object thru the hole to keep the "C" clip from sliding around as we pried it out in order to remove the shaft.
Also, I'm not sure if I am allowed to post the links to the videos on YT that I used to guide me thru this process. Maybe will do that later, but those videos were a major help with this.
I still want to do a brake job as I last did one about 50K miles ago. It has 104,000 on the odometer now. Then I may need to replace the battery as I have not driven it enough since the top stopped working, and I have recharged the battery numerous times.
Sorry for being so long, but my stress level has seriously lowered since watching this thing work again, and just had to exclaim my joy a little.
SLK 280 R171 2007 Black / Audi A4 Quattro V6 3.0 2002 Silver
Originally Posted by BEAR83
> "did i close the tank relief valve ?"
Where is this valve? I have never heard of it!
I think he is meaning the pressure relief valve on the block of the pump. When doing the manual clo
sing procedure you have to open it to permit movement of the roof.
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