If you're replacing the sunroof on your E39 ALWAYS DO THE RESET PROCEDURE

[MehMan]

Ask me how I know.
I was switching from a sunroof to a moonroof, so metal to glass, I was just about done, I had replaced all the broken pieces on my new-to-me moonroof, cleaned and greased everything so that it was operating smoothly, just needed to put the rubber belows and glass in, but needed to put the mechanism into the tilt up position to attach it all. Oh how woefully wrong was I when I pressed the tilt up button to be greeted by a massive grind and then the noise of plastic getting broken. Since it was on a Sunday evening, half past eleven in the evening to be precise, because in my mind this "could be done in an afternoon with one hand", I nearly cried and set fire to the dreaded smokey diesel touring.
I was lucky enough that only one tilt adjuster broke (which I had just replaced with a brand new one), the rain deflector got destroyed (which is now an incredibly eye watering expensive piece new from BMW) and somehow I managed to destroy the motor. I recycled all the parts from my old sunroof and the day was saved, bar the past few days when I kept trying to figure out why the sunroof wasn't going through the reset procedure or moving at all under power, until I replaced the motor with my old one and could finally operate the moonroof. Cack.

So, in closing, if you're replacing the sunroof on your E39 ALWAYS DO THE RESET PROCEDURE before doing ANYTHING else. I believe this should be common knowledge by now, I'm hoping this might save some poor soul from going through the same turmoil.

[BarryM]

Sorry to hear that horror story, maybe you can post quite what the reset procedure involves?


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[MehMan]

Oh yeah, good idea, doh! Press and hold the tilt up button for 15+ seconds until it goes into the tilt up position and stays there. After it has done that, release the button and it should work. Just follow this procedure:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLsnYk_k-AY&t=1s

[E39 Newbie]

I'm in the middle of repairing my moonroof. One of the plastic sliders, the one where the arm attaches, broke and the other was quite brittle. I, too, broke some stuff when testing. I pulled the whole cassette out because you can't replace those sliders with the roof in the car.

I'm getting ready to "zero" the sliders, reinstall the motor and put the frame back in. So, my question is this: At zero position, the arms are raised something like they'd be in the pop-up mode, correct? And, we never want to run the reset procedure with no glass in, correct? So, I assume I install the glass after reinstalling the frame, hook up the switch, and immediately perform the reset procedure. Is this correct?

I guess that was three questions. The manual tells all about zeroing the sliders, but is a bit fuzzy on the best time to reinstall the glass and do the reset. I really, really, really don't ever want to do this again. Effing BMW and all their plastic crap.

[MehMan]

I pulled everything apart, and zeroed the sliders to the pop up position with the motor out, as that's the extreme forward position for the sunroof motor (if you operate everything by hand with the motor out you'll see what I mean). After that I reinstalled the cassette, and reassembled everything. In theory you can reset the motor without having to put the glass in, but that's how I broke the tilt up slider the last time. However I think that's because I broke the incredibly expensive rain gutter by having the motor slam it into the drainage plastics and the motor thus had no stops to detect. IN THEORY, if everything is set correctly, you could do the reset without the glass in, however, don't hold my words as gospel, as I never tried that.

Also, quick tip on those bellows, they slide onto the plastic retainers from the rear and under the rain gutter thing. Depending on how you removed your headliner(I unscrewed the whole thing instead of nearly breaking it off the metal holding tabs which require taking 3/4 of the mechanism apart before getting the cassette out) you could fit them with the cassette out and save yourself a tiny bit of trouble.

[E39 Newbie]

Yes, I left the bellows in when removing the cassette. I think Rube Goldberg would be very proud of this sunroof mechanism.

The manual has pix of a little tool, which is basically a piece of 6mm square stock. It fits laterally into the groove in the plastic sliders, and fits into a little hole in the plastic thing that screws to the side, the thing the "rain gutter" arms slide back and forth in. I think that's basically fully open in the pop up position, but I'm not 100% sure. You've pretty much confirmed that, if not, it's mighty close.

The motor itself doesn't' have any knowledge of full forward/back, does it? I don't see any index key on the shaft gear. I assume the voltage spike when the roof closes is the signal for the computer to turn off the motor. Is that correct?

I'm off the the garage to finish zeroing, install the motor and see about mounting the freaking thing back to the ceiling of the car. I hate sunroofs, always have since my first car. Useless pieces of unnecessary headroom-robbing junk.

I would love to know how you unscrewed the rear-most headliner screws. I wanted to, but I couldn't see a way to get a driver in there because the moonroof "shade" was in the way. Those stupid clips were six kinds of biotch to get loose, and I slightly damaged one. All the freaking Youtube videos just showed the guy pulling down and it popping off with very little effort. Bunk!

[MehMan]

I couldn't see any micro switches or anything like it that would tell the motor the limits. But if you operate the mechanism by hand you can see that the forward most position is the tilt up position, so I'm guessing it has preprogrammed limits/time of travel or something once it knows where the forward most limit is. The plastic guides are hooked by the motor wire on either side, that's how everything operates.

To remove the headliner screws I ended up removing the bellows, you just slide them back from the shade rails and they should slide off to the side from the guides. Wish I knew that the first time around, since I managed to break the plastic guide. Luckily enough ebay managed to save me. Once you do that, you remove the shade screws and just pop it off, then it's easy to remove the headliner. I was careful when removing the nice new-to-me anthracite headliner from the parts car, but I just hammered the heck out of my old one with my hand and it did get it removed, but also mauled it a little bit.