I just got done replacing front and rear sunroof seals with OEM’s—what a pain—and scraping off the old RTV and applying Sikaflex mastik to the upper frame, following the LRM Technical write-up. I had it all completely disassembled and pulled apart and have the front sunroof back in, but it won’t shut properly. The driver’s side “sliding mechanism” won’t roll all the way up, but the passenger side will.

Driver’s side, 1/4 inch to go

Passenger side, all the way rolled up



The driver’s side rear corner of the front sunroof glass has a sliver of daylight coming through between it and the new sunroof seal, which at first I thought was the seal not being seated correctly. After fiddling with it more, I realized that this mechanism isn’t going all the way, and if I pry it with a screwdriver towards the front, the glass will be drawn down and make a tight seal.

I’ve thoroughly cleaned the springs and blown them out with compressed air, and the spring that that piece is attached to moves freely. But once it’s “closed,” that piece won’t go any farther up the track, unless I leverage it a little, and then it still springs back into the slightly retracted position when I let go.

Any ideas?

 

Your motor is probably out of time on one of the cables.

I would drop the motor, then get the sunroof slides in a full "closed" position and reinstall the motor. The cables act like gear teeth with the spiral wound cable and the gear on the motor, and they can jump if things are worn out or binding

 

I agree. Remove the motor and then get the glass in the closed posting then reinstall the motor. Per Rave make sure the gear is in the proper orientation. They call it a notch but it's really a hold. The hole should be just left of the electrical connection where it says DB9. See picture.

 

I might have to reset my motors, but part of my problem was the slider inserts were worn out. I made some 3d printed ones, file is in the 3d printed thread.

 

Thanks guys! I missed that part in my RAVE but now see where it talks about that notch.

I dropped my motor and lined it up, but now I’m stuck—how do I close the sunroof all the way without the motor in? I tried just pushing down on it but it won’t budge. The RAVE says something about the “timing pegs” for the cable assembly, but I can’t see those. How should I be closing the sunroof without the motor in?

 

On car-facing side of the motor, there's an Allen wrench hole you can use to manually crank it. Is that helpful?

 

Hey thanks Brandon, yeah I used that to realign the motor, but if I'm not mistaken, I need to align the tracks with the motor completely disconnected from the sunroof cables, so I need to close the sunroof without the motor attached at all. Not sure how to do that.

 

I would remove the sunroof glass to adjust the cables.

Pop the glass up, Take the glass off by removing the 4 torx screws holding the glass to the track.

Next, "close" the sunroof so the sliders will move into their close position.

Drop the motor to unsync the cables and free them up.

Push the sliders all the way into the closed position, in the case that one is out of time

Reinstall motor, put track into "vent" position

Reinstall glass

 

Aaah, gotcha! Thanks for the step-by-step Llamasaywhat. Ok, the glass is coming off, I’ll check in once this is done

 

Once the motor and glass were out, the sliders went right into place with light pressure. Excellent!

Motor and glass are back in and the sunroof is beautifully sealed up. Only problem now is I have to do some more adjusting, because now the passenger side is too tight against the plastic clip and either won’t open, or make a loud “pop” when it does open, pushing past the clip. This was a problem since I bought the Rover actually, but much less loud and coming and going randomly. Sometimes I’d open the sunroof and it’d pop, and sometimes it wouldn’t give me any trouble. Now I know what that is, I’m going to fix it, hopefully for good. Just have to figure out why it’s so tight like that...

I’ve run water full blast on the sunroof along all the edges, the outer mastik seal and the inner new rubber seal, and along the four glass fasteners (I took the disintegrating paper gaskets off the fasteners and put a bead of mastik around each fastener; not ideal, but what I had on hand and very effective, I believe). Not even a hint of a leak. It’s a beautiful thing.

I had the front windshield leak, captured in a “water ingress” TSB and described exactly how I have it in this Australian Land Rover post https://www.aulro.com/afvb/discovery...indscreen.html Instead of removing the windshield and dealing with that, which is way beyond what I’m in a place to do right now, I used a gloved finger and ran the smallest amount of sikaflex all the way along the top seam of the rubber seal that runs along the top of the windshield. Essentially, there’s a fraction of a millimeter of a gap between the top of the seal and the metal body where I’m sure water can slowly seep in, and running my finger along the length of the top of the seal with sikaflex filled in any possibility of a gap. I poured water along that top seal and voila, no matter water ingress around the A pillar or near the rearview mirror. Easiest cure I’ve done in a long time. Thankfully my Sikaflex is black, and so is my paint, so it blends in, but obviously for other color paints it’d be a good idea to use an old credit card or something like that to make the tiny bead of black sikaflex blend in with the rubber seal and not look too obvious.

Finally, as I was pouring water on the rear sunroof—also no leaks anymore—water began dumping into my cargo area through the cargo door. Simply pouring in. Really impressive. Guess that’s next on my fix-it list, though at least I can put all my trim and headliner back in first before fixing that. I’ve been droving around with dangling wires and no headliner or trim for the majority of this year, it feels like, and I’m ready for sun visors again!