How To: Sun Roof Repair (1 Viewer)

[Rkroelin]

The sunroof on my wife’s 97 refused to shut one day after making a funny noise (her words). So, I went search ‘mud for possible causes and solutions. I wasn’t able to find much save for this thread where several people contribute their findings:
https://forum.ih8mud.com/80-series-tech/241694-sunroof-stuck.html
Armed with the knowledge of broken cables I decided to determine if that was indeed my problem. It turns out it was, and after a brief chat with my parts guy I had two new sun roof rails heading my way. About half way through I realized that documenting my trials and tribulations might help some other people avoid some of my mistakes. So, I took some pictures during reassembly.
While you are working in this area you may consider the bicycle tube fix detailed here:
https://forum.ih8mud.com/80-series-tech/235129-bicycle-tube-sunroof-fix-wind-noise-gone.html

Tools you will need:
Various size flat and Phillips blade screwdrivers
8, 10, 12, and 14mm sockets & ratchet
TSRM

Steps:

1)[FONT=&quot] [/FONT]Remove headliner; follow the TSRM’s instructions to disassemble the interior and drop your headliner. I can take some pictures of this process if people wish when I reassemble it. For now I’ll focus on the sun roof itself. This took me a little over an hour.

2)[FONT=&quot] [/FONT]Remove the plastic trim from around the sunroof – be very careful if you have a tan interior as you cannot buy new replacements in tan. Mine were very brittle and shattered. The TSRM calls these pieces “sliding roof garnishes”.

Re-reading this thread, and in the first post -

It is not necessary to remove all 4 trim pieces. You only need to remove the two side pieces, to access the nuts that hold the glass in place. I left the long front and rear pieces on the glass. Might save someone a few minutes, or the headache of replacing trim.

3)[FONT=&quot] [/FONT] Remove the sliding roof glass. This entails removing six 10mm nuts that were uncovered by removing the garnishes. Pay close attention to any shims that may be in place between the bottom of the glass and the top of the rails. These help position the sun roof vertically in the hole. Mine had one on each side of the front studs.

4)[FONT=&quot] [/FONT]The next step in the TSRM is to remove the drip channel. This is attached to the rails and as noted by the TSRM must be pulled forward to remove.

 

[Rkroelin]

5) Next remove the wind deflector. This turned out to be a somewhat of a pain for me due to the sun roof rails being stuck about halfway back on the wind deflector’s arms. I could not slide the rails back in order to allow this to pop up.

Each rail has a roller that sits on top of this arm to push it down as the sun roof comes forward. I had to carefully bend the wind deflector’s arms out around this roller. See picture 1.

This picture shows the roller all the ways forward, mine were stuck halfway back. Remove the screws. Slide the arm forward out of its slot, then tilt the deflector to vertical to remove it.

 

[Rkroelin]

6) Next, inside the truck, remove the sheet metal relay support piece from below the sun roof motor by removing the two 10mm bolts and one 8mm bolt. Disconnect the Relay’s plug from the chassis harness. Next drop the motor by removing the 4 10mm bolts. Disconnect the motor’s plug from the chassis harness. Set both pieces aside.


7) Now you are free to drop the sun roof assembly. First disconnect the drain tubes from each corner of the sun roof assembly.

Second disconnect the second row’s courtesy light plug from the chassis harness. It is located on the driver’s side right above the door.

Then remove the three nuts holding the front of the sun roof assembly up. Next, I removed the 6 plated (gold color) bolts. There are three on each side. This leaves 3 gray colored bolts on each side.

At this point your life will be much easier if you have a helper. With the help, remove the last 6 bolts and carefully drop the sun roof.

Double check for anything still attached – you don’t want to crack the assembly. On mine, the guide tubes for the cables hung up on something on the roof, carefully guide them off of whatever they may hang on.

Carefully set the sun roof assembly on your workbench. Being a new homeowner, in my case, this was the ground. See pictures.

 

[Rkroelin]

8) Now to replace the rails in the sunroof assembly. First remove the two plastic corner pieces the TSRM calls “Guide rail covers.

This unveils an additional screw on each corner. Remove these screws.

This lets you slide the “Cable Guide Casing” out of the sun roof assembly. This is the tube thingy that the cables move back and forth in.

To do this you must rotate the cable guide casing down so that the mounting tab you just the screw out of can move past a molded ridge on the sun roof assembly.

The cables will pull out of the tubes as you remove this piece.

 

[Rkroelin]

9) The TSRM says to remove the 4 screws holding the rails to the sun roof frame. The problem is you already removed two of them to get wind deflector off of the vehicle in a previous step. So, you only need to remove the two silver flathead screws (one on each rail).

Next pull the cables up out of the holes. Then pull the rails forward and off of the sun roof frame. The sun shade is held between the two rails in a slot.

I chose to clean mine while it was out.

Set the old rails aside.

10) Cleaning time. Clean the sun roof frame, the wind deflector, the drip channel and anything else you can think of. Get the dirt and grime off so it doesn’t foul your new, expensive rails.

 

[Rkroelin]

Reassembly is largely the reverse of what we have done up until now. However there are a few stumbling points that I ran into.


11) Get your two new rails and put them on the correct sides. Feed the cables down through the hole in the front of the assembly.

Slide the sun shade into its slot in both rails.

Note the plastic stopper on either side of the bottom of the sun shade. This goes behind the plastic arm on the rails. This allows the sun roof to push the sun shade back out of the way when you slide it back, and allows you to slide the sunshade back without opening the sunroof.

You don’t want to reassemble your truck just to discover that you can’t open your sun shade without opening your sun roof. See the picture.

Then slide the rails into their stoppers at the rear of the sun roof frame. See the second picture.

 

[Rkroelin]

12) Align the rails with the holes and replace the silver flat head screw, one for each rail. Check to see that this screw is completely flush with the bottom of the rail. One of my new rails had a countersink that was inadequate; I used a countersink bit and fixed this by hand. Be careful if you use a drill on this soft aluminum. This could be a pain to fix with the roof reinstalled in the vehicle and could prevent one of the slides from coming all the way forward.

13) Reattach the cable guide casing, and the plastic covers.

14) At this point slide the moving portion of each rail as far forward as possible. This will make your life easier in a few minutes.

15) With a buddy, reinstall the sun roof assembly in the truck. Replace all the bolts, nuts, drain tubes and the electrical connection.

16) Reattach the drip channel and wind deflector. Reattaching the wind reflector is much easier now that you can move the slides in the rails.

17) Move the slides on both rails so that they are all the way forward. Note that they can catch on other pieces of the rail until you reattach the glass.

Ensure that they are both all the way forward.

See roller location in picture. It should be all the way up to the plastic piece on the wind deflector arm on both rails.

18) DO NOT SKIP THIS STEP! Now look at step 11 “Adjust Drive Rail” in the TSRM’s removal instructions.

Move the triangular piece of each rail so that the tick mark on it lines up with the tick mark on the glass mounting tabs as shown in the TSRM’s diagram. Unfortunately I did not get a good picture of this.

 

[Rkroelin]

19) DO NOT SKIP THIS ONE EITHER! Now look at step 12 “Adjust and Install Drive Gear Assemby” in the TSRM’s removal instructions. The instructions for this step in the TSRM are inadequate.

Get the motor/gearbox assembly that you removed earlier. On the side that has the output gear remove the screw and the “Cam Plate Cover”. This exposes a plastic cam with an E-clip holding it to a shaft. See picture. Ignore “Remove the large screw, washers and shims” in the TSRM, they don’t exist. Carefully remove the E-clip, these are known to fly great distances. Use something to trap it.

Slide the cam off of the shaft. This exposes a nylon plastic gear with some grease on it. Try not to get it dirty. This is what you need to align like the diagram shows you. Remove the gear. Note the alignment marks on the small, external output gear and the motor housing.

Take a large flat blade screwdriver and turn the drive shaft on the opposite side until the mark on the small output gear lines up with the mark on the housing. With these lined up you need to line up the other gear we just exposed and removed like the diagram in the TSRM indicates.

There are two marks 180 degrees from one another on the aluminum housing. Line the arrow on the gear up with the one on the opposite side from the limit switch and slide it back on. The plastic bump should line up with the mark next to the limit switch. This gear should be flush with the teeth on the housing only on the opposite side from the limit switch. See picture 2.

Take the cam we removed and put it back in place so that the plastic bump fits into the slot, and the window exposes the arrow and mark. See the first picture again.

 

[Rkroelin]

20) Put the cover plate back on the motor housing. Reinstall the motoring housing and the relay support bracket in the truck. Reconnect the plugs for both

21) Without disturbing the slider location reinstall the sun roof glass. Be sure to replace the shims in their original locations. Replace all 6 nuts.

22) Put the keys in the truck, turn the ignition on and check your work. The sun roof should now work again. If the tilt function does not work in the correct location then you will need to recheck your alignment from my steps 18 & 19.

23) Reassemble your interior (I have not done this yet…)

Please let me know if you spot any mistakes or need any clarifications. I wrote this from memory, and it is getting late.

Sheesh this got long winded.

Pictures of it working, because it makes me happy. Don't mind all the tape mess, that will get cleaned up.

 

[Rkroelin]

Place Holder 9

 

[NLXTACY]

Thanks a million for the write up. I'm not experiencing this issue but my buddy is and we've been dreading trying to fix this.

 

[MiniPigg]

Nice write up. Thanks a million as I will be taking the headliner out of my 80 as soon as it starts warming up.

 

[cpg]

Thank you!

 

[Rkroelin]

Not a problem. Hopefully it can save people some time and frustration.

 

[concretejungle]

Thank you a ton for your time in writing this up. I have had my sunroof "jump off track" once and ended up taking it to the dealer to be fixed ($336 in labor).

My sunroof is now creaky and leaky, so i plan on tackling this pretty soon. I'm dreading it!

 

[Rkroelin]

If it is making noises you might be able to pull it apart and clean the rails out and reoil them. If some of the bushings are worn down, maybe some grease would help?

By the way, my brand new rails did not come with any heavy grease in the tracks, they seemed to be lightly oiled.

The cable attachment snapped on mine, i'm guessing due to a combination of age and the rails getting loaded with gunk.

 

[PurpleFJ62]

Replace any interior clips with new OEM ones to prevent rattles, worked good for me after swapping sunroofs in my 4runner. I am betting LC's and 4runners use the same clips...
90468-05011 and 90468-05098 and 67771-89110
These three clips seem to be everywhere on every toyota I have seen. Which isint that many...

 

[Rkroelin]

Funny you mention that, I was just thinking about that on my way home. I ordered 5 red and 5 brown as spares for the back panels already. I'll take your suggestion and order some more.

Thanks.

 

[SchniperJB]

Thank you for the write up

I found your post the other night, when I was dreading the removal job. Read it many times, then decided to bite the bullet.

Just finished removing the sunroof and assembly. Your post made the job so much easier.

Hope I remember how to do it all in reverse, when time comes to reassemble.

Thanks again, I owe you .

Jeremy

 

[Fitzer]

This is a greate write-up and is why this forum deserves a

If you pull the sunroof and pan out to fix the eom roof rack holes (if you even need to pull it), it looks like it should all be able to go back without having to the alignments and adjustments to the gears if I'm following it right....or does any disconnection of the removal process require all the adjustments even you are not repairing the tracks, rails, pulleys, rollers, etc.?

My sunroof works, I just might need to pull it to the roof repair which is where I am not sure .