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Hi Everyone,
Bought my used '88 740 GLE in '00 with 207,000km, and had no leaks until '07 (330,000km), although there were stains on the headliner. My driveway has a slight incline, so the car sits nose up, and would expect the rain water to flow to the rear. Since I have the roof liner out for recovering (the rear covering fell off like a collapsed tent, because the cloth separated from the fuzzy goo), I was able to check out the drain hoses by disconnecting at the tray pipe and feeding a long piece of twin-lead house wiring (loomex) down to the little plastic manifolds that lead thru the rear side panels. Despite no blockage found, when leaving home and moderately braking at a stop sign a half block away, the water leaks down into my lap, or on my shoulder. BTW the loomex seemed to go quite far down the front hoses.
Re- the headliner, I sliced it across about 2 inches behind the dome light bump, and carefully pried it out (it's fairly fragile like heavy papier mache). With this done I managed to take the whole sunroof unit out without removing the seats. It's weighs about 30lb, awkward, and has thin metal edges, so made a mock-up from corrugated carton in order to rehearse my moves. Did this single-handed, but having two people well co-ordinated is preferable. As already mentioned, the gasket around the tray flange has lost its oomph, and it was actually misaligned at the factory assembly! Watch out for those funny shouldered sheetmetal screws, they are meant to stop before over-compressing! Am hoping to solve the problem by adding a strip of peel'n'stick over the existing seal. The mounting screws go thru it, so will have to temporarily remove some to get enough finger clearance without taking the whole unit down again. BTW the black rubber gasket only goes back as far as the center posts, while the rear seal is a piece of semi-rigid foam.
Actually the roof was getting very sluggish so put some treadmill lube on the tracks - works. Finally, when removing the roof unit, be careful to protect the motor, which hangs out of it on a thin metal bracket. There's an adjustable spacer stud which keeps it in alignment. And for some weird reason, the four screws at the very front are different head size and easily stripped - just replace with a slightly larger American size. Would like to submit a separate entry about my adventure with re-covering the headliner on another thread.
Cheers from Montreal,
Techie68
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