This has obviously been covered before, but I haven't seen a thread showing what to do with the sunroof cassette once you've got it out of the truck. I'm going to try to focus in on that and just briefly touch on the parts of the process covered in existing threads. Mods, please feel free to combine with others if that works better.
Like many others here, my sunroof was frozen in the closed position when I bought my truck. The front drains were also clogged, which was likely the root cause of the sunroof failure as water had overflowed the drip tray and was sitting on the cables and in the cable guide housing.
Before starting the job, I ordered both drive cables, and the cable guide from PartSouq:
My truck is a 99, in looking at other sunroof threads it appears in later years Toyota stopped listing these individual parts and will only sell the entire sunroof cassette. Others have noted that these earlier parts will fit later years, but YMMV as I can't independently verify that.
1. Remove lower and upper interior trim panels
This has been covered in other threads, and I will add some pictures of the FSM pages detailing this. A set of trim removal tools is a must if you don't want to damage anything. The basic order of operations is rear to front, lower to upper. I followed the FSM procedure which includes removal of the lower interior trim panels. Others have mentioned they can remove the upper panels without removing the lower, and this is true, I just wanted to be extra careful not to damage anything.
As has been noted in other threads as well, some of the assist grip handles are what I would call "unnecessarily tight" I knew this ahead of time, I used the right tools, and I still managed to strip out the head of the driver side B pillar grip and had to drill it out. I'd recommend a hand impact driver for these. Also, JIS bits will help immensely, some of the screw heads on mine were "pre-buggered" and the only reason I was able to get them out is I could reach down past the damaged area with my JIS bits. Phillips will want to cam out almost immediately.
2. Remove sun visors and clips
3. Remove front overhead center console
4. Remove rear HVAC control panel
5. Remove both dome lights
6. Remove sunroof opening trim
7. Remove black button push-in clips around perimeter of headliner
8. Remove headliner
9. Remove glass from sunroof assembly by removing the interior black trim pieces and 4 nuts holding roof glass to drive cables
10. The sunroof cassette assembly is held by two nuts at the front and a series of bolts around the perimeter. A helper would be beneficial here, but I was able to drop the assembly myself by removing all but the center two fasteners, then sitting in the 2nd row center seat and supporting the assembly with my head while removing the final two bolts and dropping it down.
At this point, this is now what you should be looking at.
11. Remove the rear drip tray, it's the crosswise piece with "646" on it in the photo above, it simply unclips from the drive cables
12. Remove the stoppers for the fabric sunshade and the drive cables. The drive cable stoppers are the brass colored screws with the round plastic stopper and the sunshade stoppers are the rectangular pieces at the rear of the rails near the blob of old nasty grease in the photo below.
13. Slide the sun shade out of the rail and set it aside somewhere it will stay clean, the next part is messy.
14. At this point, the FSM will simply tell you to slide the old drive cables out by hand. Well, there's no way it's going to go that easily. Since I knew I was replacing both the cables and the guide, I cut the old cable and guides with a hack saw as close to the rails as I could to reduce the amount of old cable I'd need to drag through with me. I then hosed down the cable, rail and what was left of the cut down guide tube with PB Blaster and went inside to eat dinner.
After an hour or so, I placed a large flat blade screwdriver against the block where the cable attaches and came up with my best expletives to mutter as I "persuaded" the old cables to come out with a rubber mallet against the screwdriver. See the photo below, place the screwdriver against the red rectangle and whack with rubber mallet from right to left (cable should be moving toward the rear of the guide rail).
15. Once you have both old drive cables out of the rails, you can remove the wind deflector, guide blocks, and the plastic drip tray. Now you want to thoroughly clean all of the old dried up grease out of the rails. I used tons of simple green and an old toothbrush to make sure it was all clean. I also used a bit of emery paper to smooth out a couple of little burrs in the rail. This is also a great time to really clean the drip tray and make sure the drain ports are clean since at this point in the job, you're really questioning why you needed your sunroof to work anyway, and that you definitely don't want the drains clogging and having to come in here to do this again.
16. Remove the old cable guide tubes and attach your nice new ones.
17. Re-attach the guide blocks, drip tray and wind deflector to the rails. Re-grease the rails with your grease of choice. It looked like Toyota used white lithium grease, so that 's what I used, but maybe there's something better out there now?
18. Slide your new drive cables into the rails making sure the cable routes properly into its channel in the rail as well as enters the guide tube without pinching or binding.
19. You now need to properly align the cables into the roof closed and tilted down position. Look again at the photo above and you'll see a little "window" cut into the drive assembly. The cable is in proper alignment in the photo, when the single indicator line on the drive cable aligns with the middle of three indicators on the outside of the "window" In order to achieve this alignment, you need to move the same block in the red rectangle above forward or back until the marks align properly. This is the same block you banged against with the screwdriver to remove the old cables.
This is probably a good time to mention there is a similar alignment indicator for the motor drive. But, since my roof was stuck in the fully closed position, I assumed the motor was properly aligned, and in fact it was.
At this point everything is mostly reverse of disassembly to get it all back together. Glass height can be adjusted by loosening the small torx screws just below the nuts that attach the glass to the sliding roof assembly.
The FSM specs normal run time for the roof to be approximately 6 seconds. Mine timed in at 6.8 sec after this repair, which seems a bit slow but might still be within "approximately" tolerance?, It may be down to the motor being a bit tired, or there being some old thick grease in the motor/gear assembly.
Some final takeaways from this. This isn't a job for the faint of heart, or if you're short on time to work. It took me two full days, although I did some extra-credit projects as well with the headliner out in running the microphone for my Pioneer head unit up the A piller and to the center console area with the homelink.
The design of this roof mechanism definitely seems very prone to failure from both water and/or dirt accumulating on the cables. I think these roofs are definitely a use it or loose it feature and periodic exercising, cleaning, and re-greasing are key to longevity.
Like many others here, my sunroof was frozen in the closed position when I bought my truck. The front drains were also clogged, which was likely the root cause of the sunroof failure as water had overflowed the drip tray and was sitting on the cables and in the cable guide housing.
Before starting the job, I ordered both drive cables, and the cable guide from PartSouq:
| Toyota | 63221-60030 | CASING, SLIDING ROOF CABLE GUIDE |
| Toyota | 63224-60030 | CABLE, SLIDING ROOF DRIVE, LH |
| Toyota | 63223-60030 | CABLE, SLIDING ROOF DRIVE, RH |
My truck is a 99, in looking at other sunroof threads it appears in later years Toyota stopped listing these individual parts and will only sell the entire sunroof cassette. Others have noted that these earlier parts will fit later years, but YMMV as I can't independently verify that.
1. Remove lower and upper interior trim panels
This has been covered in other threads, and I will add some pictures of the FSM pages detailing this. A set of trim removal tools is a must if you don't want to damage anything. The basic order of operations is rear to front, lower to upper. I followed the FSM procedure which includes removal of the lower interior trim panels. Others have mentioned they can remove the upper panels without removing the lower, and this is true, I just wanted to be extra careful not to damage anything.
As has been noted in other threads as well, some of the assist grip handles are what I would call "unnecessarily tight" I knew this ahead of time, I used the right tools, and I still managed to strip out the head of the driver side B pillar grip and had to drill it out. I'd recommend a hand impact driver for these. Also, JIS bits will help immensely, some of the screw heads on mine were "pre-buggered" and the only reason I was able to get them out is I could reach down past the damaged area with my JIS bits. Phillips will want to cam out almost immediately.
2. Remove sun visors and clips
3. Remove front overhead center console
4. Remove rear HVAC control panel
5. Remove both dome lights
6. Remove sunroof opening trim
7. Remove black button push-in clips around perimeter of headliner
8. Remove headliner
9. Remove glass from sunroof assembly by removing the interior black trim pieces and 4 nuts holding roof glass to drive cables
10. The sunroof cassette assembly is held by two nuts at the front and a series of bolts around the perimeter. A helper would be beneficial here, but I was able to drop the assembly myself by removing all but the center two fasteners, then sitting in the 2nd row center seat and supporting the assembly with my head while removing the final two bolts and dropping it down.
At this point, this is now what you should be looking at.
11. Remove the rear drip tray, it's the crosswise piece with "646" on it in the photo above, it simply unclips from the drive cables
12. Remove the stoppers for the fabric sunshade and the drive cables. The drive cable stoppers are the brass colored screws with the round plastic stopper and the sunshade stoppers are the rectangular pieces at the rear of the rails near the blob of old nasty grease in the photo below.
13. Slide the sun shade out of the rail and set it aside somewhere it will stay clean, the next part is messy.
14. At this point, the FSM will simply tell you to slide the old drive cables out by hand. Well, there's no way it's going to go that easily. Since I knew I was replacing both the cables and the guide, I cut the old cable and guides with a hack saw as close to the rails as I could to reduce the amount of old cable I'd need to drag through with me. I then hosed down the cable, rail and what was left of the cut down guide tube with PB Blaster and went inside to eat dinner.
After an hour or so, I placed a large flat blade screwdriver against the block where the cable attaches and came up with my best expletives to mutter as I "persuaded" the old cables to come out with a rubber mallet against the screwdriver. See the photo below, place the screwdriver against the red rectangle and whack with rubber mallet from right to left (cable should be moving toward the rear of the guide rail).
15. Once you have both old drive cables out of the rails, you can remove the wind deflector, guide blocks, and the plastic drip tray. Now you want to thoroughly clean all of the old dried up grease out of the rails. I used tons of simple green and an old toothbrush to make sure it was all clean. I also used a bit of emery paper to smooth out a couple of little burrs in the rail. This is also a great time to really clean the drip tray and make sure the drain ports are clean since at this point in the job, you're really questioning why you needed your sunroof to work anyway, and that you definitely don't want the drains clogging and having to come in here to do this again.
16. Remove the old cable guide tubes and attach your nice new ones.
17. Re-attach the guide blocks, drip tray and wind deflector to the rails. Re-grease the rails with your grease of choice. It looked like Toyota used white lithium grease, so that 's what I used, but maybe there's something better out there now?
18. Slide your new drive cables into the rails making sure the cable routes properly into its channel in the rail as well as enters the guide tube without pinching or binding.
19. You now need to properly align the cables into the roof closed and tilted down position. Look again at the photo above and you'll see a little "window" cut into the drive assembly. The cable is in proper alignment in the photo, when the single indicator line on the drive cable aligns with the middle of three indicators on the outside of the "window" In order to achieve this alignment, you need to move the same block in the red rectangle above forward or back until the marks align properly. This is the same block you banged against with the screwdriver to remove the old cables.
This is probably a good time to mention there is a similar alignment indicator for the motor drive. But, since my roof was stuck in the fully closed position, I assumed the motor was properly aligned, and in fact it was.
At this point everything is mostly reverse of disassembly to get it all back together. Glass height can be adjusted by loosening the small torx screws just below the nuts that attach the glass to the sliding roof assembly.
The FSM specs normal run time for the roof to be approximately 6 seconds. Mine timed in at 6.8 sec after this repair, which seems a bit slow but might still be within "approximately" tolerance?, It may be down to the motor being a bit tired, or there being some old thick grease in the motor/gear assembly.
Some final takeaways from this. This isn't a job for the faint of heart, or if you're short on time to work. It took me two full days, although I did some extra-credit projects as well with the headliner out in running the microphone for my Pioneer head unit up the A piller and to the center console area with the homelink.
The design of this roof mechanism definitely seems very prone to failure from both water and/or dirt accumulating on the cables. I think these roofs are definitely a use it or loose it feature and periodic exercising, cleaning, and re-greasing are key to longevity.
