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87 744 NA
Finally got around to fixing my sunroof. The 'guide' (for lack of a better term) that rides on the track and is moved by the 'worm gear' on the right side was broken. Luckily the 88 parts car I had just bought, had a good sunroof.
Nothing to it really. Read the FAQ for certain. Just raised the back of the sunroof (actually, only the left side was raising, that's what the problem was), released the head liner portion, lowered the sunroof, slid the liner portion back and pulled the 4 screws holding the rear of the sunroof from the track and guide assembly. Then the sunroof will lift up by hand in the rear. If the little slide part is all that's bad on yours, you can replace them now.
In my case, it was a little more difficult, but simple all in all.
After raising the rear of the sunroof (with only the driver's side actually going up), I released the 'clip' that holds the hindged part of the liner to the sunroof. Just pull it back out of the 'hook' that holds it to the liner.
Like I said, only one side was going up, so after releasing the side that was up, I had my wife pull down on the hinged part of the liner slightly and used a coat hanger to release the other side.
Then I slid the liner back to reveal the sunroof workings from inside the car. I had to leave the sunroof in the up position and push down on the hinged portion of the linder slightly, to clear the bracket enough to slide back. Then my Wife slid the liner back a couple inches and I was able to push it the rest of the way from inside the car (whe was afraid she might push it back too far.
At this point the problem was not obvious, so I went ahead and pulled the 4 screws that hold the rear of the sunroof and hinged the back up to see that I had a broken part. I had expected to find one of the 'slider guides' broken, but in fact it was the part that they mount to (the part that actually rides on the worm gear).
Ok, the repair was going to get a little tougher, but no biggie (acutally turned out fairly simple).
Went back to the parts car, did the same as above, but removed the 4 front bolts that hold the sunroof to the hinges as well, and removed the sunroof all together. Then I removed the 6 bolts holding the front 'worm gear' cover and lifted it up enough to turn the air deflector enough to remove the arms that push it back down when closed from it. Then removed the screws holding the track into the roof assembly (5 on either side). Then pulled the sunroof motor (or crank and then crank gear). Then I lifed up on the front of one side of the track, while my Wife did the other, and the whole assembly pulls out very easily through the sunroof hole.
OK, time to do the same thing on my car. Problem is that someone's already worked on it and stripped out 4 of the rack screws on one side (stripped out the phillips part, not the threads). Found my best action to use a drill bit just large enough to drill away the head of the bolt and leave the threaded part (look at one of the bolts that you WERE able to remove to get the right sized bit). This allowed me to remove the track assembly as before.
Now I had 4 bolts with no head, flush with the top of the mount. Had no ease outs that small, so I decided to drill them. Used a very small drill bit into the center of the remainder of the bolts. This was enough to get one of them to screw in fully and fall into the headliner. For the others, I stepped up to the largest bit I could and still not get into the threads. This made all but one screw in fully and drop to the head liner. For the last bolt, I was able to use a 8p nail to turn it (couldn't get it to unscrew, so screwed it out the bottom as well). Now there are 4 partial bolts lying on the headliner (where they will remain until I decide to replace my headliner. It's got several bad places).
Swapped out the headliner portions on the two tracks, and slid the good track assembly back into my car and bolted it down. Bolted the sunroof on as I took it off, but took the time to adjust it since it had never sat level.
Now I've got a good sunroof. Total time (incl. removing parts from parts car) 2 hours. I do have some tiny bolt parts lying between the sunroof pan and the headliner, but you can't tell it and they don't move (IE don't rattle). I didn't bother to replace the bad rack onto the parts car. I just laid the sunroof into the hole, onto the pan and put the spare tire on it to hold it down. lol
Read the FAQ, it'll get you there.
While I was at it, I yanked the pwr mirrors from the 88 parts car and put them on my 87. The connectors for the mirrors were differnt, but the color code was the same, so splicing them in was simple.
Next is to replace the exhaust system from the cat back. Right now all I have is the resonator (front muffler). The rest was ripped off when I bottomed the rear muffler out on a large rock. While I'm at it, I'm going to swap the motor mount brackets out for the solid mount brackets on my 86 parts car and lose the hydrolic mounts.
Frank
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