I had the same issue. Only whined a tiny bit towards the final closing in normal operation. Then the top started to not work correctly. I could hear the motor running fine, top would come down more or less, but not go up on its own. Made a loud whiny noise. The loud whiny noise is because you are almost out of hydraulic oil. Most likely one of your hydraulic pistons is leaking. It will only be a matter of time before it does nothing and you won't need the release to move the top. I am going to post a few pics in a new post. Basically I pulled the top of for the diagnosis and found the reservoir empty. Funny thing is that I did not really see any sign of leakage when I first pulled the top (using Shipkillers instructions). After filling the reservoir and running the top via a battery, it leaked like crazy. The best price I could find was around $200 and some odd dollars for rebuilds by tophydraulicsinc.com. I replaced both at the same time. Tool me a full day. I disassembled my motor and found that it was fine so I decided not to change it out at that time.
'04 BMW Z4
'04 Suburban
'00 Porsche Boxster
'79 Porsche 928
'83 Jeep CJ7
'77 Fiat Spider
Bookmarks