900 sunroof problems
 

Hi,

I have managed to clean the sunroof drains but water is still leaking in. It looks like it's not coming in in between the seal and the bodywork (or if it is, it's draining away). It would appear to be coming in because the seal is not bonded to the glass very well. This means that the water is dripping in on the other side of the drain channel. It's not much but enough to drip occasionally .

How easy is it to remove the sunroof? It looks like four bolts . I suspect that I could attend to the seal with the sunroof out of the car .

Just for information, the motor is not working but I can still wind it up and down using a screwdriver.

Would appreciate any advice.

Many thanks

André

I used Capt Tolley’s Creeping Crack Cure. Yes, that's a real product! See:

https://www.volvoforums.org.uk/showthread.php?t=61059

It will tend to run out on to the glass if done in situ, a few mm, as it's a thin fluid. If I did it again I would protect or grease the exterior of the seal so that it can't run over it, and stain it. A bit like doing round the bath with sealant- I use masking tape. If you remove the sunroof glass you could tilt a side up by 45 degrees, and then trickle the product in to the gap between seal and glass- allow to set, then do another side. I have an idea that the product isn't bothered by existing water/damp, but I did mine during the summer heat.
I never originally had a leak, but the seal wasn't sitting well on the glass, and I thought I'd do some prevention. I'd be interested to hear if there are other methods/products...

Buy a tube of silicone grease and rub some into the sunroof seal all the way round. Repeat a month later and a month after that followed by 2 months later and again 2 months after that. Leave it 6 months and repeat (this should now be a year from the first treatment) and repeat the treatment yearly.

The seal dries out so the silicone grease revives and swells it slightly, back to the size it was originally..

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B006O7HTDE

On most cars with sunroofs, a smear of silicone grease once a year is meant to be a service item. Smear it on, leave it to soak for 10-15 minutes then wipe off the excess - DO NOT RUB!!!!!

Before winter, i also smear some on the rubber door seals or spray them with silicone lube spray, again wait for 10-15 minutes and wipe (NOT RUB) the excess off.
Keeps the rubbers nice and supple and helps prevent them sticking to the door in icy conditions.

The sun roof is easy to remove. Its the metal that is rusty that was the problem in mine. This caused the water to drip in the slider channel.

The only solution I found was to seal the top of the seal against the glass so water can't get in. Was a fairly permanent solution with black silicone.

I have Carlube silicone grease in a package right beside me, recently delivered!
Guess what that's for...
(just wish it wasn't raining. I should have started applying it in the dry weather).

this is one of my jobs for the long hot New Zealand summer, so I've done some research recently.

The original seal around the glass is a rubber channel with a steel "grip" moulded into the inside and a flocked coating on the outside. Over time, the steel grip's "teeth" rust and swell and the channel will not seal against the glass.

The only full cure is to replace the seal. I have not yet found a viable replacement.

A partial cure is messy and impermanent. You pull off the old seal, run a bead of silicone sealant OR sealing putty inside the bottom of the seal channel (where the glass beds into the seal) and then refit the seal to the glass "squishing" the sealant between the seal and the glass to stop water getting through. You could possibly get away with modelling clay or plasticine.

This cure doesn't address the rusting and eventual failure of the steel grip, so I am continuing my search for a suitable product. Like the truth, its out there somewhere.

I know someone on here has found the part number for the seal Ash, if yours is that far gone then yes, replacement is the only answer. Whether the cost of sending a seal to NZ would be prohibitive or not i don't know but it is a current Volvo part. Might be worth a call to your main stealer! :thumbs_up:

Sunroof
 

Thanks for all your help. Where the seal meets at the front of the panel the corners are twisted up a little. There is evidence of some black sealant having been used in the past so I'm keen to clean this up and perhaps apply new.

I have rescued the seal which was crusty with lichen and age (remember I paid £200 for this car). With lots of care and silicon, it's now flexible again and seals happily against the roof panel. It's now just the seal to glass bond which is problematic.

I'll lift the sunroof out and have a good look at it (if it ever stops raining)!

It's just amazing that although we can put a man on the moon, there is not a car company on earth who can make a sunroof which will never leak!

What is more amazing however is the fact that cars come with sunroofs at all. If it's blisteringly hot sunny weather why would you want to expose your head to that? If you are doing motorway speeds why would you want to create all that noise by opening a roof. If it's cold and raining etc etc.

Rant over - and thank you.......

If you're going to remove the panel complete, make a note of where the join is (something in the back of my mind says it should be on the left about 4" from the back edge but might be slightly out on the measurement) and ease the seal off the glass panel. You'll find a lot of dirt and grit between the panel and the seal - this could be a cause of the leak.

Clean this off both the panel and the inside channel of the seal. Use a hairdryer to soften the seal and flatten out the areas where the seal has rucked up. Let it cool for a few hours so you can make sure it won't revert to being rucked up.

I recently renewed a seal on a sunroof glass panel (non-Volvo) and used a rubber mallet to tap it home on the edge of the glass. You could run a bead of black RTV silicone sealant inside the seal channel before fitting, obviously this will squeeze out as you fit the seal. Two ways of sorting this, allow it to cure then use a scalpel or single-edged razor blade to scribe round the RTV where it meets the seal then either roll it with your fingers to lift/remove the excess or again use the razor blade to scrape it off the glass.
Alternatively wipe the excess off with a damp cloth before it cures. However this method can spread the RTV to places further afield, i'd go with the razor blade.

Once it has cured, use the hairdryer again to flatten any rucking that occurs. You may also find the seal is longer once it's off the panel than it needs to be - DON'T cut it! :nah:
Using thumb and forefinger on each hand, hold the seal and gently squeeze it along the edge of the panel to compress it to fit - with this in mind it could be worth a trial fit before using the RTV so you can do this as you go.

Toyota made cars with "Moon Roofs", were they hoping to send one to the moon i wonder? :tounge_smile:

When the sunroofs are new, they don't leak. Properly maintained, they won't leak. However that is usually for the "planned" lifetime of the car, in Volvos case i believe that's 20 years. In other words, if they haven't been properly maintained (silicone grease rubbed into the seal once a year) then they will leak and after 20 years, the likelihood of leaks increases because of the age of the rubber.

As for why they're fitted at all, go back to the 80s and sunroofs were the "new big thing" to have as standard. Many cars had factory sunroofs from new from the early/mid 70s and kept them even in subsequent incarnations/replacement models.
The 90s brought a big air-con trend. Many top end cars of the 80s were equipped with A/C as standard. The lucky ones had a sunroof and A/C, the argument now is you don't need a sunroof if you have A/C, not one i subscribe to as sometimes the extra fresh air from the tilted sunroof is nicer than conditioned air.

Times change and now it's hard to find a new car with a sunroof. I like the extra ventilation from the tilt facility and use it on both of my beasts. Fortunately they're both fairly quiet at motorway speeds but havae to confess i'm not a big fan of sliding the panel completely back to expose a huge hole in the roof, especially on blisteringly hot days! In fact, the reason i fitted a new seal to the glass panel i mentioned above is because i intend fitting that panel in my other beast, the current one has a pattern of black dots as the only "shade" from the sun. This can create a nasty strobe effect so the one i'm fitting is from an earlier model and is bronze/gold tinted solidly. Having previously owned the previous model of the same spec, i know this will be an iimprovement.

Each to their own though, sunroofs are one of those things like colours, some people like this one, others prefer that one and so on.

Good luck with yours, hopefully it'll dry up sometime soon. :thumbs_up:

I used mine to help transport a tall plant once. So they can be useful :D