Japandrew73's OEM Euro Restore

[TDE30]

I wasn't ever talking about the glass itself, for all I know LOF or Plinkington could have made the actual glass. ASC (American Sunroof Company) makes the electric sliding/venting part of the moonroof, the switchgear is ASC as well. ASC still has a website and I'm sure you can still order parts for the moonroofs that were installed by the dealers in E30's and E34's.

http://www.americansunroof.com/

[Javier h]

I was thinking the exact same thing

ASC is well known for fabrication including electrical moonroofs. Almost order one of their products for another car 15 years ago. It was an electrical roof. At the time, they only sold to retailers and I could not order from them directly. Some custom automotive folks here in california were on their listing, but after all was said and done, it was going to cost too much money at the time and I dropped the idea. Definitely I would give them a call if you run into issues with parts.

[Japandrew73]

Thanks for the heads up guys. On their website theres a picture of their store in LA and it has a pic of a white e30 inside the store... most likely they would have my rails and stuff. I'm going to give them a call later today and see if they have the right brackets and rails and what the price is. Unfortunately I'm very broke right now. I bought two more items I probably shouldn't have but they'll be entertaining for you guys and for me. They come on friday.

[Japandrew73]

I called the guy at ASC and told him about my e30 and he said the best bet is to go to sunroofdoctor.com because they supply all their old parts. (I'd provide a link but it's one of those websites that has one link for all the pages so you'll have to navigate yourself) I went to electric sliding roofs and ASC 840 are the dimensions of my roof. Here is the diagram.... Do you think these could be the correct parts?
[IMG]I called the guy at ASC and told him about my e30 and he said the best bet is to go to sunroofdoctor.com because they supply all their old parts. (I'd provide a link but it's one of those websites that has one link for all the pages so you'll have to navigate yourself) I went to electric sliding roofs and ASC 840 are the dimensions of my roof. Here is the diagram.... Do you think these could be the correct parts?

[Japandrew73]

I had a bit of time to work on the moonroof today. I started by taking off the gaskets. The moonroof contains two gaskets. One that wraps around the back, and one that is that furry material we all know. It's odd though because my sunroof has the fur material all the way around, so my moonroof may have been missing the fur in back.

First gasket off (rear)

The thicker furry second gasket (front)

All gaskets off

I then proceeded to remove the rail and slider from the one side. The nuts were rusted, so I blasted it with WD-40 and tried and then began stripping the hex nuts. I got one off


I figured that the rail thats on here is starting to come off and there isn't a second rail to begin with and I'll need it off the glass panel for making the new one, so I said "fuck it" and ripped it off (carefully).

Closer pics


Then it was time for the Black Trim around the edge of the glass. This is what needs repainting. Instead of masking off the glass, I took it off. It's held on with silicon glue so I had to very carefully take it off. It took a while, but you have to move slow in order to not damage the glass.

Here it is fully off. It looks like its resting on the glass but it's bent from when I took it off so it's resting on the cloths and towels, I wouldn't want to scratch the glass.

I took the gaskets and rails to save for later. I'll need the rails for making (or buying if I can find them) new rails, and the gaskets are being saved so that when I buy the new gaskets I can compare them in hand to be sure they are the correct gaskets.

So then I took the surrounding trim outside and because I had to bend it slightly to take off the glass, I began straightening it. I used the hammer and mallet very little but most of it was done with my hands. Just hand bending worked best due to the hard angles. Here is the finished result. I aimed for as little gap in between the ground and the trim as I could, this way when I go to silicon glue it back in, I won't have any troubles with it staying in place.



Then I did a serious washup. I still need to get a razor blade and start picking off all of the leftover silicon from removing the surrounding trim, but I'll do that later along with the repaint.

After the wash, I began to clay, and use glass polish all over the glass, especially in the spots where the trim lied. You can see in this pic the residue left behind from the trim. It's almost a line

Here is the other side which I had clayed and glass polished. No residue or line (ignore the left over silicon, that will be gone with time)

Did the same to the bottom, but didn't focus as much on the edges. I will need some serious work to get all the shit off from the rails. It came out looking beautiful though. Points of interest on the bottom, are the blue marker writings (obviously from a junkyard or something) and the goop from the rails)


This last pic really emphasizes how neat and smooth the surface is after my cleaning. No residue left over, no scratches, nothing. Just smooth, polished, glass.

That's all I had time for today.

[ikkitousen]

OCD to the MAX! I love it! I'm sooo inspired to go out and rip apart my car this weekend!!!

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DAMN I NEED TO GO TO PEP BOYS!!!

[Japandrew73]

OCD to the MAX! I love it! I'm sooo inspired to go out and rip apart my car this weekend!!!

Haha that's the spirit!

[Japandrew73]

Took a break from the moonroof to pickup some stuff.

In case you can't see in the pic, the little thing are the water pump pliers for the large toolkit. The regular water pump pliers actually do not fit, they are too small. Here's a pic for comparison.

And when you unwrap the big bag, you get a bootlid liner


Now, if you haven't been living under a rock and reading my thread like you should, you'd know I have a large toolkit instead of the small toolkit. The bootlid liner for the large toolkit does exist, but the part number is lost. So I used the part number for the small toolkit bootlid liner and I retrofitted it for my large toolkit. Notice how they wrap the cardboard..


Here's what I currently have..

Took it out

The liner uses the same grommets as the door panels so luckily I had a bunch left over

So this project definitely embodied the saying "measure twice cut once". It took a lot of thought to not mess up and even with a lot of thought there were some imperfections, but it turned out pretty good.

After tracing, started peeling back the vinyl

Lightly traced on the front

Cut lines in the vinyl that were slightly inward from where it actually needs to be cut, this way, I had vinyl to wrap back around.



Made the cuts to fold the vinyl around when the cardboard is cut out
The Cardboard is very hard to cut, it probably wasn't, but it seemed like it was coated in epoxy or something

Taped the vinyl back for a preview of the result

Half way there

Same process with the other side


Taped the whole vinyl back for a preview

Untaped, took outside to be ready for finishes


Preview again

The weapons of choice. I used a process that seemed to be pretty effective. I sprayed strips of vinyl at a time and the cardboard it would fold onto, and then as fast as possible, pick up the packing tape and wrap it tightly so it would stay bonded. Occasionally I would keep pressing down and applying pressure to the spots, but after it was all taped up I blow-dried it with hot air so It would be stickier. I don't know if this helped, but I did it anyways.

one piece at a time

Whole thing


Looks good right? Now peeled off after about 30 minutes of time to dry

It's not perfect, but it's pretty close to it. The only way you could detect the flaws is if you were me. But To all that try this project in the future, my advice is be careful to only cut what is absolutely necessary, and leave plenty of vinyl to fold over without ripping it on the curve

Now it was time for the grommets. They were indeed the correct ones, but they were very hard to get in place. I actually had to hollow out the holes for the grommets just a bit more to get them to fit.


by this time it was starting to get dark, so the following pics kind of suck

With the pic above, you can see some strange things with the grommets. all of the bottom of the liners grommets, fit where they are supposed to and are nice and secured. The grommets for the entire top of the liner, go to nowhere. They either poke into straight metal, or they poke into one of the giant holes in the trunk liner. So in the next day or two I need to carefully drill holes for some of the top grommets, and figure out a solution for the grommets going into the giant holes.




And the new water pump pliers go into the tool kit. Slowly but surely, toolkit progress is being made.


If you look at the natural design of the bottom of the trunk, there's an almost "X" like shape with circles, and ovals going across the trunk. (It's kind of hard to explain but if you look you will understand what I mean). The holes in the "X" shape, sit perfectly flush with the large toolkit edge of the bootliner. So I think I'm going to make some grommet holes and put some grommets around the toolkit to have the liner sit more snugly. It's not perfect, but it looks way better than without it. Once I get the grommets in the right spots It will look awesome.

Oh and the pics previously displaying "bandwidth exceeded" work again. :p

[Firestorm]

The bootlid liner for the large toolkit does exist, but the part number is lost.

I have one ;)

Are you going to retro-fit the vacuum powered adjusters for the headlights too? I have it on one of mine, not working though.

[Japandrew73]

Made a bit more progress on the moonroof. Just stripped the bottom trim to repaint later and stripped all the leftover silicon glue. Now it's nothing but glass.

Goop left over from rails

also stripped



Very messy

Finished up the bootliner. It looks good, but not perfect. And the fact that it isn't perfect bothers me very much. I'm working on a solution.

The reason it doesn't fit with the grommet locations it has, is because believe it or not, the euro trunk lid is different than the US trunk lid. Check the part numbers if you don't believe me. So I had to drill some holes in the trunk and relocate some grommets






Here are where all the grommets are located

The wrapped around vinyl had started to come off so I redid it with Liquid nails and the SEM adhesive and then taped it down. That worked a bit better.


Here it is up. You can see the imperfections, but it still looks damn good.


Nice and snug against the lid

when you open the kit is mainly where you can see the problem with the wrap around. Bit it really isn't that bad in my opinion.

[Japandrew73]

Whoever said the moonroof bracket was held on by a torx screw, you nailed it. I had just quickly looked at it and thought it was a hex. So I took out the bit set and used the torx screw to get the bracket by itself and then hammered it out on the steel vice I have to get it as straight as possible.

I then took this to my friend who knows a guy who is the master of all fabrication apparently, and lucky for me he is going to replicate the one I gave him, and make a mirror image of it to put on my moonroof!:D Brand new will look awesome and be best for the structure of it. So that is currently at his place and will be done in a week or two, I told him to take his time since I'm not particularly wealthy at the moment.

While that is there, I still have plenty of mini projects I have to do to the moonroof. Now that the two trim pieces are off, it was time to strip the trim of paint, and leftover silicon glue. That was incredibly messy and time consuming. Here is what it looked like once stripped and sanded

Painted

Compared to the top trim piece I still have to strip, sand, and repaint.

I think it really looks better and was worth all the work. It will look great once it's all assembled.

Yes, I painted the bottom and sides, stripped and sanded every angle. No use in only painting the top, that's cutting corners and cutting corners is a big no-no in restoration.



Oh, I also was a very smart bargain hunter, and got myself a very rare, original Heyco flathead red screwdriver. Now, as far as i've seen, the red flathead screwdriver should have white small font on the side of it, instead of "HEYCO" moulded into the side of it. I was a bit bummed that I had a knockoff, but I asked around on a few e28 sites (they share our large toolkit) and it turns out the "moulded" type of red screwdriver I have was also used by BMW. So lucky for me, it's an original! :D

Before

After (Please excuse the bootliner flaps, I still have yet to perfect it. I need to epoxy the vinyl to wrap around because nothing else seems to be working. I'll get it fixed though..)

Getting very close to the factory brochure picture...

More pics


Oh, and did I tell you how much I payed for this mythical screwdriver? No? A grand total of $15 :D
Always be watching ebay...

[RedTRex]

That green "box" on the back of the cluster is either for the OBC or cruise control. I can't remember but i'm pretty sure its for the OBC so it can calculate your average MPG, Miles to empty, etc.

Note sure if this was ever resolved but - It's the speed input for the cruise control.

[Japandrew73]

Note sure if this was ever resolved but - It's the speed input for the cruise control.

Oh good I don't even have cruise control anyways

[franco90]

wow
cool as always

[Hick]

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