So it's been an ongoing issue for a while (1-2 years)...It just never bothered me. Now I've got the repair bug. Doing a number of small repair projects to keep the car in good condition.

Problem: The sunroof raises in the rear (all positions) it will go up and down fine. The issue is when I go to retract it into the roof...fully open position. It goes back about 4 inches and then locks. When I set it to close it goes back fine but won't fully open.

I checked the switch initially and it had a few of the contact points were burned through...replaced the switch...no change.

How would it be best to diagnose the issue. I'd like to have the correct part before I go about tearing it apart. I'll be using used parts because there's no way I'm paying 500-700$ for Audi to repair it.

From what I've read it's either the motor, gears, or something jamming the track.

Any thoughts/suggestions?

Thanks,

Aaron S.

 

I have the same problem. No solution yet though.

 

Your best bet is to take out the glass. You can see an awful lot with the glass gone. There are just 3 torx screws on each side, then it pops out.

But, do not retract the sunroof without the glass unless you put something in there. Without the glass in the way, the rear wind screen will pop up and catch on the ribs underneath the sheetmetal roof and the whole thing will bind up. You might make it worse.

What I did was use a metal yard stick thing (any thin piece of metal will work) and slide it back between the wind screen and the bows under the sheet metal. If you do that, you can slide the whole sunroof back and the wind screen will slide against your metal piece instead of catching a bow. Then you can see just about everything in the mechanism.

 

Been there, done that. I'd suggest that with the glass out, use only the hand crank to move the mechanism while you shine a light in there between the headliner and roof. On mine the roof stuck open, and I ended up taking the whole sunroof frame out. You have to pull grab handles, A and B pillars, dome light assembly, and some door frame molding to lower the headliner, then disconnect sunroof drains before removing the nuts holding the frame up. In my case, nothing was broken, but years of leaves and dirt had built up and was causing the thing to jam. It took a lot of brake system cleaner spray and toothbrushes, but it works perfectly again.

 

Two posts, and he's been right on both of them. Must be the Turbo510 from over at AudiWorld. If it is, listen to him, he's gotta clue.

 

Thanks, mtroxel. AudiWorld's B5 forum has kind of died away, don't you think?

 

Thanks guys. I'll give your suggestions a try this weekend and go from there. My other project is to replace the stereo wiring harness...sunroof looks to be childsplay compared to this. And by harness I mean the whole thing not the connection from the stereo to factory plugs....the plugs to everything else. Guys I bought it from did a hack job on the harness and apparently one of the connections came loose and touched something "hot"...next thing I know the fiancee is calling screaming that the car is smoking from the inside...never a good thing. Fried the power wire back a few feet and since all the ground/speaker/aux/ect wires are bundled together it fried all those as well. But luckily i found a matching full interior harness on ebay for dirt cheap...tracked all the lines down and luckily the stereo harness was able to be removed and separated from the rest...I don't know how many of you have ever had a full harness from the interior, but it's like 30-35 lb...with the stereo harness out it's like 2-3...much more manageable.

Thanks