I might have done the wrong thing with my sunroof

[Offgrid]

As you guys know, it is a 1988 740 saloon, and the sunroof was taped up with heavy duty bitumen tape. It's been like an oven in the car on some days recently, so I decided that I would try to get the sunroof back into service. I always seem to be over-confident in my abilities, and I decided that all it needed was the cleaning of the gutter drains. I removed the tar strips, and that was an easy job. Underneath was some hessian type adhesive tape, so I removed that - another doddle of a job. Now the truth was revealed. The previous owner's "mechanic" had injected mastic into the gap around the whole of the sunroof panel. It took me 2 hours to cut it out, and now the seal is not in as-new condition. There is still some mastic in the mechanism, and I have to hold the flappy bit in front down with a screwdriver to close it. Yes, I did manage to revive the motor, which just needed a replacement fuse.

There are some really good maintenance videos I've watched, and I'll try to clean up everything. I suspect that I'll have to remove the sunroof to do this. I'm also going to need some new rubber seals, and I'm shocked to see that some sellers are charging up to £80 for these. Do I really need a Volvo part, or can I buy some suitable rubber strip to make the seals?

This is probably not the most important job to be done on this car, so I'm wondering if I should just tape it up again, and leave the job for Ron ( I expect you guys know about Later Ron). I love the sunroof, and I would really like to restore it, but it has turned out to be a much larger job than I anticipated.

[Forrest]

This post might help you.

https://www.volvoforums.org.uk/showthread.php?t=299721

Folk referred me to it when I was trying to fix a later glass moonroof with a plastic wind deflector. Unfortunately, the parts are not interchangeable and so it didn’t work for me. Good luck. It is irritating when things on these cars don’t quite work how they’re intended to.

[Ian21401]

If it’s a steel sun roof the below thread may also help.

https://www.volvoforums.org.uk/showthread.php?t=305687

[Laird Scooby]

You will need the Volvo seal for it, it's bespoke to the Volvo panel sadly and yes, it's the sharp end of £100 from your local Volvo main stealer. Protect the new seal with an annual generous application of silicone grease, let it soak in for 20-30 minutes then gently wipe off the excess.

[J liddy]

I've been doing the silicone grease on the sun roof seals dave it works great bringing it back to life only do it once a year going to do it shortly

[Offgrid]

I've had a look at the mechanism, and there is a bit of rust there. The rear pivot point on the wind deflector has rusted through, so I have to hold the deflector down with a screwdriver to close the roof. I suspect I will have to remove the sunroof to check on the damage. The drain holes don't clear water as quickly as I would have expected. So I suspect that this may have been the original problem, but that is easy to fix.The inner seal/trim looks OK, so I will clean that up and reuse it. There is a bit of rust on the edges of the car bodywork. That will need to be treated and repainted. The mechanism could do with a clean and grease.

I'm enjoying the use of the sunroof, so I hope that the cleaning that I have done will stop too much of a flood entering the car if we do get some rain before I can complete the task. I've also removed the heated seat fuse, as that seems to have been the source of the previous electrical problems. I don't know if these were caused by a wet seat, or wet wiring under the carpet.

[Ian21401]

Have a look at my post #4 in the link provided by Forrest in his post #2 on this thread. If your deflector is the same as mine then the unsecured rear end of that side arm may not prevent the deflector from being pushed down as the roof closes.

[Offgrid]

It seems that the immediate problem is to clear the drain hoses, and I've managed to do this with two at the front. The car is parked on a slight hill with the rear lower than the front. When I dribbled water onto the air deflector is ran into the front gutter, and away down the drain hoses. However, some of the water seems to have run along a side gutter, and dribbled out behind the rear wheel. It obviously isn't running out fast enough, as a few drops started to appearnext to the roof liner inside the car. That leads me to suspect that the rear hoses are blocked, but they well inside the roof area. Is there an easy way to clear them without removing the roof liner?

[Ian21401]

I guess that the drain is supposed to exit somewhere in the area of the rear wheel, but there may be a leaking joint hidden behind the head lining. Someone who has had a head lining out may be able to comment. I had a regularly blocking drains problem on my daughter’s V50. (Main cause being an angled joint at the bottom of the A post just before the drain passed through the bulkhead.). I used a long piece of curtain wire ( the plastic coated wound wire type commonly used to hang net curtains) carefully pushed into the drain from the sun roof, twirling it as it is fed in. It’s a fiddly job but did the job.
I’ve seen suggestions that compressed air may help, but I don’t know the success rate.
I had a leaking drain problem wetting the headlining on a Ford Orion. Both sides above the rear passenger doors. I carefully freed the edges of the headlining above the door aperture and found the plastic drain hoses had a metal jointing tube. The metal had corroded. Fancy joining plastic hose with a cheap metal tube.

[Whyman]

Has anyone tried using strimmer line. Available in various thicknesses and possibly more flexible than curtain wire?