Moof Roof Repairs on E46 Coupe

I have a friend with an E46 coupe, and the inner panel of the moonroof is broken.

NORMALLY The liner can be pushed by hand to expose the glass roof panel, OR the liner will move on its own to accomodate the Tilt Feature of the glass roof.

In my friend's car, the liner can be taken out of the car when the roof is tilted, and it MUST be moved by hand for any movment (other than full opening of the glass roof). The liner does not move for the Tilt, nor does it move for Close if the roof is open.

MY QUESTION Somebody here posted a link to service the mechanism to the E36 roof, I used this link to service my own car and the results were excellent. Is there a link to do the service for the E46's roof?

It appears that the glass roof comes out by removing 3 torx screws along each side, but before I set about working on a car-not-my-own, I thought it would be nice to confirm my observations.

Reply to
Jeff Strickland
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Reply to
Tom Wright

Have you any experience with the innards of the moon roof? The roof itself all works fine, but the headliner seems to have a mixture of broken clips and such.

My thought is that once I get the glass out, I can go to the local dealership and look at the drawings to see what parts I need to secure the headliner to the roof mechanism -- where "headliner" only means the panel that the driver moves if he wants to see the sun through the glass roof.

Reply to
Jeff Strickland

You probably won't even have to look at drawings. Just ask the parts person for the "standard" parts that break routinely in EVERY E46 moonroof sunshade. They will surely have many in stock since this is such a common and recurring failure.

Reply to
Bob Smitter

I agree with Bob's comments below. If you do that, you'll get two clips (one for each side of the shield). They are pretty simple to put in.

You will be amazed at how small these parts are. After you see them, you will not be surprised that the previous ones broke.

Bob Smitter wrote:

Reply to
Thomas Wright

The responses you guys gave were spot on. My daughter bought an E46 since I first posted my question, and her car has the same problem.

The glass panel was easily removed by taking the 6 torx screws out (size 20 torx, by the way). Two of the plastic parts simply slip onto some metal tabs on the iner liner, and the other two are screwed on with torx screws that are painfully obvious (size 10 trox screws) These two parts had to be slid onto the track, then aligned with the liner, then the screws are installed.

There is a tab on the left hand rail that physically moves the liner, I had to make a bending adjustment because the tab would ride over the top of the part that it was supposed to push against.

Anyway, this is an easy fix that pretty much anybody should be able to accomplish. I think it took my daughter and I about a half hour to do the repairs, but that included several minutes to troubleshoot the tab-sliding-over-the-thingie problem, and make the correct bend to resolve the issue.

Reply to
Jeff Strickland

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