Hi guys
It's an inauspicious way to introduce myself to the forum, but I have a recently purchased '97 Boxster which lunched part of its soft top mechanism about a week after purchase. For those who are familiar with the mechanism, I have posted pictures of the damage below.
The transmission broke on both sides - snapped arm on one, snapped ball joint on the other (pls excuse poor quality cameraphone images):
Also, where the left hand pushrod connects at the white cup end, it appears to be damaged: (damage is not terribly obvious in this image, but you can see it's sort of pulling itself out slightly):
The other side looks OK (ironically as it's the original red push rod end):
Oh, and I also noticed that there's a support cable/rod with a ball joint on each end apparently missing on the right hand side of the roof (doesn't appear to be lying around in the drainage treay under the clamshell anywhere). The cable/support rod I am talking about can be seen on the lower right hand side of this image, it's missing on one side:
That's as much as I can determine right now. I'm not sure what to do next. I'm worried about paying someone to spend hours learning how to repair it. If I can't effect a repair myself, I'd certainly like to put the thing into a repair shop with a clear idea of what needs to be done.
Many thanks for any insight or guidance.