sunroof / moonroof reseal

[aardvarkash10]

Its May, and yet here in NZ it feels like a particularly benign UK spring. We have had so little rain, the council is now enforcing a 50% reduction in water use.

But it must be coming. And in fact it is tomorrow - forecast tells us 20-25mm an hour for 8 hours or so.

And Moomin's sunroof was still leaking Niagara Falls of rain on occupants, as it had been doing for four years.

The delay in action was out of fear. At least the seal was on the glass yeah? If I took it off, would it crumble and leave me seal-less? And the instructions for removing the roof and its mechanisms looked daunting. And confusing.

Is a glass sunroof a sunroof, or a moonroof? When people discussed removing or repairing a sunroof, did they mean glass, or steel? AAAAAAAAAAAaaaaargh!!!!

Lockdown boredom overcame all that crap.

I can confirm that a GLASS roof is spectacularly easy to remove. Push the sunshade (the slidey-inside-the-car bit) back as far as it will go. On each side of the now exposed sunroof, directly beneath the glass itself, is a thin plastic trim. It unclips easily so go right ahead. Now you can see the two bolts on each side that hold the glass itself to the mechanism. The heads are 8mm, so get your 1/4" drive socket set out and undo them.

And pull the glass out!

Damn, that was easy - why did I wait four years???

I hardened up and pulled the seal off the glass. It's NOT constructed as I thought it was. The seal grips to the 1.5mm steel surround that the glass is glued to. There is a shoulder to the glass, and the seal cozies up to that shoulder and slightly over the edge of the glass.

The shoulder SHOULD have caulking or sealant in it, but 20 years of weather and stuff and that was non-existant. A previous owner had used semi-liquid black sealant gunk to refit the seal, but had been parsimonious with it.

So, I cleaned the entire sunroof with an alcohol-based solvent. I then used a standard wet-area silicone sealant in a caulking gun and liberally coated the entire shoulder area of the sunroof. I then cleaned and filled the inside of the seal with the same stuff.

I planned on doing this just once.

I left the sealant to tack off slightly and then refitted the seal. To clamp it firmly to the glass and make sure there were no gaps or places where the seal hadn't "bottomed" I wrapped a tie-down around the perimeter of the sunroof over the seal and tightened it down good and solid. This clamped the seal to the glass while the sealant set up. Once it had set up, it was easy to scrape off excess sealant with a razorblade.

Haynes has excellent refitting instructions which I followed to the letter.

Today, I tested the repair and I'm pleased to say it was a success! I TOTALLY regret not having attacked this earlier. I now look forward to going out in the rain and playing in puddles.