Sunroof controls have gone haywire

[SICARIO]

This morning I tried tilting my sunroof open. It opened, then the motor started sounding like it was skipping or jumping gears. After that, every button seemed to have a mind of its own. I eventually got the roof closed, but now the controls are all mixed up:

• “Slide Close” opens the tilt function until it starts skipping again
• “Slide Open” closes the tilt
• “Tilt Open” and “Tilt Close” don’t do anything at all

Where should I start troubleshooting this? Motor, switch, track alignment, or does this sound like the sunroof lost its calibration?

 

[excessive]

the sunroof operates off of a motor with a gear that moves toothed "drive cables" that are inside of metal tubes. over time the grease dries out inside the tubes and they become stiff and unusable.
it sounds like teeth have broken off of those sliding " drive cables". the only real fix is to drop the headliner, drop the sunroof and install new drive cables.

here are some pics of when i did mine. the OEM parts were still available about 2 years ago

 

[SICARIO]

Dang. Frustrating since I lube it every year and it's been flawless. It is a 23yr old truck though (that lived the first half of its life in NY).

Should I also plan on replacing the motor, or is the drive gear on the motor replaceable?

Also, any reason to replace the guide set if the cables were previously moving fine?

 

[dbfw]

What you might try to troubleshoot and at least see if you can get functions back close to normal:

Look in your FSM, or grab one of the online copies and it shows there is a calibration mark on the motor drive gears. Pull down the trim around the switches and you can drop the motor out. Keep it connected and operate the swtiches until you can get the motor gears back into proper alignment.

Before you reinstall the motor, make sure you physically move the roof itself into the normal, fully closed position. There are some ramps in the mechanism that allow the roof to tilt rather than slide when the cable moves in one direction vs another.

If you can get everything realigned, it. might work again for a while. But, inspect the teeth on the drive gears when you have to motor out to see if your wear is there (much easier) or on the cables (bigger job to pull and replace).

 

[SICARIO]

What you might try to troubleshoot and at least see if you can get functions back close to normal:

Look in your FSM, or grab one of the online copies and it shows there is a calibration mark on the motor drive gears. Pull down the trim around the switches and you can drop the motor out. Keep it connected and operate the swtiches until you can get the motor gears back into proper alignment.

Before you reinstall the motor, make sure you physically move the roof itself into the normal, fully closed position. There are some ramps in the mechanism that allow the roof to tilt rather than slide when the cable moves in one direction vs another.

If you can get everything realigned, it. might work again for a while. But, inspect the teeth on the drive gears when you have to motor out to see if your wear is there (much easier) or on the cables (bigger job to pull and replace).

Great, I'll try that out.