California Roof Motor Repair
 

The infamous gear in my California Roof motor is stripped, and no longer fully engaging the worm gear. The Cali Roof will not completely close now....

I take it from reading this forum that the gear itself is not available as an individual part, Correct? Is one forced to buy the entire motor?!

I have been searching eBay for a motor, and there are plenty of e36 sunroof motors. But no Calif Roof motors.

Has anyone disassembled one of the sunroof motors from an e36 (or any other model for that matter), to determine if its gear is interchangeable with the gear in the California Roof motor?

Or does anyone have a link for schematics for various BMW sunroof motors (including the Cali Roof motor)?

Thanks for any leads.

Desperate for a functioning roof
 

I know this is an old post but I decided to revitalize it with a reply.
I've actually tried this, my California roof gear is also stripped, fortunately enough for me I have an e36 m3 so I pulled the sunroof motor to see if it was interchangeable, and its not. The gear is different in almost every way. I tried to call B&M (my local machine shop) to see if they could custom fabricate a metal one for me, this shop was unable to do so. So if anyone out there has any suggestions or knows of a Craigslist post in their rea with a salvaged california roof 318ti please let me know because I don't have the 300 extra dollars for a new motor, I do get a discount because I build BMWs but still the price is ridiculous.

i have the same problem. But thank god it was completely shut down. I saw a schema for how to take off the cali top in here but motor. If you can find a solution pls post it in here..

Did u check this?

http://www.318ti.org/forum/showthread.php?t=25927

If someone could take pictures and measurements of the gear it would help. As far as I know, pnosker never came up with a solution for the gear problem.

i think all cali top owners are alone with this problem :frown:

Spidertri, i sent u a pm to get ur ideas about those rims, im waiting response by the way..

+1, if someone could remove the gear, take a few pictures, measure the thickness(precisely) then place it on a piece of cardboard, spray paint over it so it leaves a silhouette, then send me the piece of cardboard, I might be able to make a few out of aluminum on my milling machine:wink: I don't even own a cali-top, but I think this would be a fun project.

thank you cooljess76! Seems like you will be cali owners' hero :) I will try to take that thing off this weekend.

Unfortunately Atlanta has a terrible weekend weather this week, as always. However, I took some pictures of the motor's gear and top's gear to give you some idea.

In my case, the motor gear is fine but top's gear. I couldnt clearly see the top's gear because you have to take off the headliner to see what is going with it. Hopefully, we will have a nice weather next weekend :)

Here is the pictures,

1. Only 2 screws,
http://i677.photobucket.com/albums/v.../WP_000691.jpg[/IMG]

2.

http://i677.photobucket.com/albums/v.../WP_000692.jpg[/IMG]

3. http://i677.photobucket.com/albums/v.../WP_000693.jpg

4. http://i677.photobucket.com/albums/v.../WP_000694.jpg[/IMG]

5. http://i677.photobucket.com/albums/v.../WP_000695.jpg

6. http://i677.photobucket.com/albums/v.../WP_000696.jpg[/IMG]

7. http://i677.photobucket.com/albums/v.../WP_000697.jpg

8. http://i677.photobucket.com/albums/v.../WP_000698.jpg

9. http://i677.photobucket.com/albums/v.../WP_000699.jpg

10. http://i677.photobucket.com/albums/v.../WP_000700.jpg

11. http://i677.photobucket.com/albums/v.../WP_000701.jpg

12.http://i677.photobucket.com/albums/v.../WP_000701.jpg

13.http://i677.photobucket.com/albums/v.../WP_000702.jpg

ok hmmm... I'm pretty sure I can cut the outer teeth with no problem, but the inner splines exceed my capabilities. The only way I see that even feasable would be to cast it, but if you're going that route, you might as well cast the entire gear. So it would be a multi step procedure involving really tedious work.

Need measurements, thickness, outer diameter, inner diameter, tooth thickness, and better picture of the inside of the gear, use macro setting on the camera.

Thank you for your help cooljess76 and spidertri. Im 100%ly dedicated to this job. I saw some manuals about the top but they are not clearly showing the procedure of removing the parts. So i will be challenged by it.

All my work so far was just to know what was going on on the inside. All the measurement details will be posted with better pictures next weekend, hopefully :)

Additionally, i bought the rims spidertri. They werent that much bad.

The folding top repair is delayed little bit due by windy Atlanta weather and scary Mallard's resources :D Anyway, i spent some time for replacing the rims instead of cali top repair for this weekend. But still im in progress i guess :D At least in some ways :)

any updates?

My car's head gasket blown when I was trying to fix the top. So, i delayed to fix the top again at that time. Currently my ti is not under of my ownership :(