Manual Sunroof 101...

[ramairthree]

Manual Sunroof-
1974 Road Runner

This is one of those things where it sort of works ok, but you want it to work better. Like many things you have not done before on an old car, you do not want to mess it up, but once you have done it gets easy.
First you need to open your sunroof a few inches, and remove the 4 clips holding your headliner panel to the sliding panel. Since mine was just the panel skeleton with no headliner left, it was even easier.

Then you open the sun roof, leave the headliner forward, pull up in the middle to get it out of the tracks, and remove. It is just for looks and has nothing to do with function. (and since it only has a few fossil remains of headliner was not exactly doing me any good for looks)

Now it is time to mess with the sliding panel. Close it almost all the way.
Look at the front brackets at each side.

Remove the outer bolt. Set it aside. It looks like the back bolts but is longer.

Now just loosen the inner bolt, and twist the bracket out of the tracks towards the middle of the car. Just enough to get out of the tracks and clear the opening is fine.
Do that on each side.

Now look at the back sides of the sliding panel. There is a flex tab there. pull down at the tip, and slide it towards the middle of the car and get it out from under the little roller. There is another bracket there. Just remove the two short bolts from each side. A small T shaped plate will come with them. If you cannot quite reach these well, close the sliding panel a little more.

Now you can remove the sunroof from the car.
No good pics from it, but the area between the roof and pan where the sliding panel goes when opened was full of mud, dirt, pine needles, wasp nests, etc. I spent quite a while cleaning it out.
If you just want to drop the whole pan and assembly, there are speed nuts to do so, and you would have to have the head liner not in and remove the bows.

I don't think you could get the pan out of the car in a RR unless you removed the rear quarter windows and I did not try it.
I planned to show you the cables, etc. but work has already called half a dozen times today, I will probably end up going in, and it is supposed to rain tonight.

I will get to that later. For now I just put it back in.

I also will probably end up dropping the pan sometime. I would really like to hit the roof and pan with rust converter, rust encapsulator, and then chassis black. I may end up just using that frame coating with the 18 inch hose on the nozzle.

 

[ramairthree]

Part II: Adjustments and Leaks

Part II
Adjustments
You should not need much side to side adjustment in your sliding panel. If so, just loosen the front bracket and rear bracket bolts, adjust, then tighten.

The height of front and rear is where you will typically need some adjustments.
To adjust the front, loosen the two bolts. Turn the round knob to adjust up or down.
Then tighten. This works fine on mine and the height holds.

For the rear height you go back to the rear brackets.
See that bolt behind the spring tab? You want to loosen that slightly. Put your sliding panel at the height you want, then tighten.

When you raise or lower the sliding panel to match the roof height, it position changes on that hinged slider bar. You can only tighten a little bolt like this so much. But for me the position is only temporary.

I can get perfect alignment.
But between slamming doors, etc. it will not stay. Just not enough oomph left in the bolts or adjusting tab anymore.

Some say it is impossible for these to leak, because of the hose and pan system. Well, I guarantee you in a hard, windy rain, if you can't get better adjustment than this, you WILL get water in your car that is not caught by the pan and drained out the hoses.

You CAN, if like me no headliner, put little blocks between the rear of the sliding panel and pan to hold the alignment. It will still leak some, as designed. A little leaking like that should be caught by the pan and drained out the hoses. But what if your hoses are clogged? That's why they make air compressors, blow them out or snake them with something or replace them. What if you are parked on a bad slope. The seal between the pan and roof is not that spectacular. It could leak between the pan, roof, and seal if tipped over on a slope.

ALSO, look at the screws here.

The front ones are holding on the cable cover and covering up the gear. The side ones are part of your tracks (cables running parallel to line of screws).

See where they come out through the roof?

Even though they would be covered by a foam insulating pad and a headliner in a finished car,

you know water will get through them unless you use some sort of thread sealant.
Or maybe someone put in the wrong length screws at some point in the cars past, because mine go through the foam even and you know that means through the headliner possibly.

My car has to live outside.

Even if you get perfect adjustment for closing the sliding panel (I don't), have good draining hoses (I do) and a solid pan without holes (I do), and perfect, non-reproduced weather stripping (I don't) you WILL get some leaking around the sliding panel into the pan. For some of you, this may stay in the pan and go out the hoses .

(another issue for later, they do not actually exit the car, just go behind your kick panels up front and by your rear wheel behind the lower rear interior panels in the back- tell me that is not begging for issues long term)

For some of us (ME) I have gotten a decent puddle behind the passenger seat, and behind the driver's seat parked in another location.

These cars should REALLY be indoor cars.

That not being the case for me and for some of you-
possibilities are:
car cover
strips of those flexible magnet sheets along the sliding panel / roof border
a 36" by 48" magnet sheet would cover the whole thing
etc.

 

[YY1]

You are THE MAN.
Half of this is NOT in the body manul, or the sunroof supplement!
..and the diagrams are tiny and PACKED with parallel lines.
This should be a sticky.
I can't wait for the cable sequel.
I don't think mine even has a cable, or if it does, it's disconnected.
It does slide manually, but I also have to use a wood block to prop up the rear.
Mine does, however, have the hoses for the rear, exiting through a hole in the wheelhouse, to spill just in front of the rear tire.
I believe the front is supposed to drain into the same place the cowl does, and exit between the fender and the cowl/firewall.

Thanks again! Now I feel like working on mine.

BTW, I've been working on the 73 and it looks like it has the stampings for the drain lines in the wheelhouses!

 

[ssok]

A previous owner of my '73 found another solution that you didn't list. Bondo :icon_sad:

 

[ramairthree]

A previous owner of my '73 found another solution that you didn't list. Bondo :icon_sad:

Bummer on the bondo. I COULD see a bead of silicone around the panel you could just undo in a heartbeat, but not bondo.


Here is my temporary leak solution.

If you do not store indoors, at worst you can have serious leaks that make it out of the pan. At best you will have some water sitting in the pan, going down the hoses into areas that can also rust, etc.

I ordered a 24x48 car magnet.

Not the quietest choice of design, but on a vintage Mopar it will get by:

 

[Ron 73]

Those front seats in the last photo sure look cool in that RR!!

 

[ramairthree]

Those front seats in the last photo sure look cool in that RR!!

19$ Walmart one piece pleather slip overs.

The full resto padding and seat covers is out of the budget for this car.
A local shop to recover is similar priced.
One place would have made slip on covers like original pattern 150$ total for both fronts, but then said would not.

 

[Ron 73]

Mine is almost the same as far as price gos, mine the wife bought because they have a couple cherry's with leaves and a stem that match's the paint and she liked them, nothing fancy about mine.. I like the looks of yours better.. Good luck with getting the sun roof the way you want it...

 

[Sooopr]

Hey Ramairthree. I have a 74 sunroof car and the headliner panel was off when I bought the car because the sunroof had a problem. Well I fixed the sunroof however I cannot figure out how to get the headliner panel back on. Any help on this?

 

[73runner]

Hey Soooper.... Look at Ramairthree's second picture.

Hey Ramairthree, great post.... I learned the hard way on my sunroof.... Wish I had this post when I first tackled my sunroof. I had the same question as Soooper and learned your way of removing the inner trim panel. Thanks

I eventually converted mine to a power unit using the motor drive out of a later model Córdoba I found at the local u-pick. Lot of the little parts are the same as similar vintage BMW's as American Sunroof Corp used some of the same technology and suppliers.

Thanks.

 

[Bruzilla]

19$ Walmart one piece pleather slip overs.

The full resto padding and seat covers is out of the budget for this car.
A local shop to recover is similar priced.
One place would have made slip on covers like original pattern 150$ total for both fronts, but then said would not.

Whatever you do, don't pay a shop to recover your seats. They are silly simple to do. All you need are covers, hog rings and pliers (paid $10 for pliers and 300 rings online), and about four hours of time. If you can make a bed, you can cover seats.

 

[Sooopr]

Hey Soooper.... Look at Ramairthree's second picture.

Hey Ramairthree, great post.... I learned the hard way on my sunroof.... Wish I had this post when I first tackled my sunroof. I had the same question as Soooper and learned your way of removing the inner trim panel. Thanks

I eventually converted mine to a power unit using the motor drive out of a later model Córdoba I found at the local u-pick. Lot of the little parts are the same as similar vintage BMW's as American Sunroof Corp used some of the same technology and suppliers.

Thanks.

The problem I'm having is getting it back on. I open the roof all the way. you need to do some bending to get the cover in the track but then the roof cannot be rolled forward over the cover so I can secure the pins in the front. Is there a trick to this?