California Top Motor Mod
 

I have one of the many California tops that have lost functionality of that stupid gear in the motor which dirves the top back and fourth. Unfortunatly, I do not have the motor as the previous owner removed it, and am not willing to spend $400 on this. I am looking into getting it working in a much less expensive way. I am thinking of finding anohter small 12v motor, attaching torque converting gears, and see if I cant get it operational again. does anyone have drawings or pictures of how the origional motor connected to the cali top?

Thanks!

-B

I can take some pictures next time I'm home from school. I'll try to explain now: Motor drives a worm gear, worm drives a series of two helical cut gears on top of each other with opposing helix angles (so the bottom gear is //////, top is \\\\\\)... they're identical but just flipped and held together by some rubber gasket thing. One of these breaks. This set of two gears drives another metal gear (this interface is what wears the gear) which has another smaller gear stacked on top connected by a short axle (one piece) which goes into the sunroof. The gear-sunroof interface is essentially a metal gear on a worm drive, as the worm drives the cable pushing and pulling the roof.

Thanks
 

I figured it would be a similar setup. Im thinking that if I can find an alternate way to engage the worm drive or find an alternate mode of operation, I can get the thing to open and close with a custom motor. I guess Step one in this is to see how many amps are delivered to the lines, and select a small 12v motor from there. Plastic interfacing to metal seems to be a design flaw however. I know it lasted several years before breaking on average, but this common mode failure is something I though BMW would have seen and corrected, especially for a higher end feature. Oh well, enough complaining, more fixing.

Gear
 

So I picked up the motor from the person who sold me the car origionaly, and I am really supprised that no one has replicated this already. Did anyone try a CAD drawing or something to that effect? I am refocusing my effort to replicate this gear instead of modifying the motor drive assembly.

I tried to get it replicated and nobody would make it with CAD because of the difficulty in making a helical cut gear.

VAC motorsport which has a large cad system quoted me like $1500 per gear though for 10 gears.

Perhaps eMachineShop.com would be affordable if you did the CAD yourself?

Probably but I have no idea how to do that!! :(

Pat, if you send me the dimensions of the gear I could do it in CAD. You might be able to find someone at your school who could do it too. I know in my CAD course we made a helical gear, it wasn't very hard at all.

9AM is my last final so I should be home in the next couple of weeks. I have a spare gear from my broken motor that I'll measure up for you!! Thanks man!

Include me...
 

I posted, recently, about the same issue with the gear inside the motor. I am needing that gear.

I agree, it seems that as common as this problem was/is there would have been a fix for it --- why BMW engineers had metal gears meshing with plastic gears is puzzling.

Anyway. I would like to be included on any breakthroughs anyone has in replicating that gear. Or as I posted, has anyone examined any other BMW sunroof motors to see if the gears are interchangeable?

But if you folks are going to actually machine a gear, I would like to get in on that. Are you considering machining it in metal rather that the original plastic?

Thanks.

Try this place for the machining
http://www.firstcut.com/

This place has configurable metric helical gears which you may be able to use, too
http://www.misumiusa.com/

By the way, metal gears meshing with plastic gears is not as bad as you might think. Usually it's done to make the gears last without lubrication.

Thank you Dave for those leads. I will report back with the results of this search.

And not to argue, but personally...... I would rather be confronted with having to lubricate the gears in this motor that having to try to fabricate a worn plastic Helical Gear (or give up and have to buy a whole new motor).

Cool, sounds good. Send me a PM when you are ready to take measurements and I'll tell you what I need. I have finals until the 18th...:frown:

yeah, but BMW knows that the yuppies who had the money for the Cali top would probably not want to be bothered with stuff like that ;)

Oddly, it IS lubricated, but with the same stuff the window sliders are lubed with. It sucks. I squirted lots of white lithium grease and silicone grease into my new motor before I installed it.

I will follow your lead on extra lubrication of the motor, once I get the motor restored (or replaced....).

I take it from all those that are reading your Thread that no one has attempted to replace the gear with a gear from some other BMW sunroof motor. I would have thought that many of the internal parts on these motors would have been then same.

If I find a couple of broken motors I am going to disassemble them out of curiosity... A friend of mine partners with a fellow who has a field full of BMW junkers.

I bought a few different ones and they all use different gears!! I heard that the E39 touring might have the same, but it doesn't. E36 doesn't. E34 doesn't.

Planned obsolescence? Or should I say a calculated (by BMW) outlay for a motor when all one needs is a gear in the motor. Surely you jest.

Did anyone have any luck? I'm searching threads, but with classes and everything else I haven't had much time for Sherlocking the forums...
I'd totally try to fix it before shelling $450 out.
If anyone's in Cali and knows a spot that could help. I'd appreciate the lead.

I did some measurements with my new digital caliper (of course they might not be 100% right but pretty darn close)

7.47mm height

12.43mm height to notch things

24.04mm outer distance from ends of notch things

12.68mm inner distance from ends of notch things

7.74mm width of outer notch things

4.38mm width of inner notch things

35.22mm outer diameter of gear (at ends of splines)

30.98mm outer diameter of gear (without splines)

24.46mm inner diameter of gear

2.37mm inner diameter of spindle

12.25mm outer diamter of spindle

37 teeth

6.30mm to tapered edge

7.65mm to top edge

1.72mm tooth width at gear

1.0mm tooth width at outer edge

I know I used odd terminology, and I don't have the angle of the teeth and the depth of the indentation that the two notch things go into, but maybe someone with more experience with CAD would be able to take a look at the gear and could build a CAD drawing for it.

Can you take a picture of the gears and point to all of the parts you are referring to? I don't have a cali top, so I don't know what a "notch thing" is.

I'm stalking this thread cause I'm looking at getting a cali top ti and if I get it, It'd be great to replace the plastic gears with metal and not have to worry about them, other than lubrication.

Mike

As am I. I would love some new gears!

Older thread, but did any action take place on producing replacement gears? Thanks! :cool:

Does anyone know If the Cali top motors, Allen and threaded are interchangeable? Thanks!


Sent from my mobile device

Hi'ya guys. I'm also a Cali top owner with the same problem. Did you guys find any solution at all to this problem? I wonder because I'm pretty sure I could get these gears made if anyone is interested....Or if there is any other solution to this problem?

I'm interested. I'd like to fix my current motor as a spare. 😎


1998 & 1997 318ti Sport Schwartz II
1995 318ti Active Alpineweib III

What material would be best do you think? We can choose between plastic, aluminium and brass. There are pros and cons with all. If we choose plastic it might break again and if we choose metal something else might break in the gear.. I'm abit if a daredevil som i'm thinking aluminium :)

Do you think anyone else would be interested?

I read in another thread they were intentionally made of plastic to manage wear and tear on other components which would be ok if they sold replacement gears. 😜


I guess you could look at it as the plastic gears have a service life of 10+ years. I'd be in line for 4 gears.

Consideration: so both styles of motors use the same gears?

Good thinking. I don't know if both styles uses the same. What style do you have?

Yes the plastic is made to manage wear and tear but the question is what kind of plastic is it? There are many different types..

I don't know if there are more than two styles, but I do know there is one with a Allen wrench manual crank (two way direction) and a threaded motor (close crank only). I have a threaded now. There are some pics of the gears in one of the threads here. (can't search too effectively on my phone). I have read that swapping the position of the two drive gears have helped some folks. It looked like a plastic/nylon composite gear from what I recall.


1998 & 1997 318ti Sport Schwartz II
1995 318ti Active Alpineweib III

ah. ok.. I've got the Allen wrench one. Lets see if we could gather som pictures and compare

http://www.318ti.org/forum/showthread.php?t=39136

Check this post for pictures. It looks to be an allen type motor. I'll pull mine, disassemble it and compare. It doesn't describe the type of plastic, but I bet it the same type of plastic that is used in the E28/E30 electric antenna gearing. I may have a spare gear in the garage for repairing those. :cool:

Thats the Allen one, just like mine.

Another question. I the files section there are three files about the cali-top. I would like to get to those but i dont seem to have the right access. any idea what to do?

I'll help you get them

That would be great. Thanks alot :)

Just to be clear, which files are you wanting? Thanks! :cool:

I actually was able to download them myself today. It was the TIS-CALI-HELP.pdf files.

Are there any more? regarding the Cali-Top?

Not that I've seen thus far. Glad you were able to get them. :cool:

I must ask; have you ever had the roof of the frame?

In the frame there are wires with attached wheels that drives the roof back. These "wheels" has grooves on them one upper and one lower. Which groove should the roof be mounted in?