OUCH! Expensive drive home last night
 

Unseasonably nice low 80's afternoon so I wanted to put the top down as I pulled out of my parking garage at work. Wanted to catch a red light but hit a bunch of them green - funny how that never works when you're in a hurry. Get to a red light and pop the latch and start the process. But I hadn't fully opened the latch and the hook caught as the roof began to open. LOTS of bad plastic sounds. The clamshell is open but the roof isn't moving. I close the clamshell as the light is now green. It closes but makes more bad plastic sounds. I get home and open it again - the clamshell opens but the roof doesn't. Take a look in the clamshell but don't see anything wrong but decide to close it up.

Took her to Woodhouse after work tonight. We open the clamshell and now we can see the issue - an arm on ea side has a plastic cap screwed onto it's end and is snapped over a ball connecting it to the roof. Both caps have snapped off between the ball and the arm. And one of them has poked a hole in a rubber piece that keeps water out of the interior.

Initial estimate - $50 ea for the plastic end pieces, $100 for the rubber piece, 2-3 hrs labor to replace the parts and sync up the roof. Ouch. But I was lucky neither free swinging arm poked a hole in the roof.

Don't be in a hurry to put your top down.

Not to be a pessimist, but those bad plastic sounds could also be the plastic gears in the top transmission getting eaten up. If thats the case, each tranny has to be replaced at a cost of about $800 each and i would say 3-5 hrs labor. I hope thats not your case.

There has got to be a DIY aspect to this...

Replacing the convertible top push rod ball sockets and top tension cables is easy; takes a few minutes.

...and used transmissions are easily found online for much less than $800.

The plastic pieces are available on _bay for about $40/pr.

Yes this is a easy job. When you break those caps you should stop using the top. Or you could damage the tray. Had one break and we spent more time trying to reach the broken cap after we popped it off after the fix. Easy job.

I've replaced those rods with the plastic pieces three times. Be aware of another issue that may be causing them to break. Odds are, they did not break for no reason.

P.S. I'm in the manual top club because of this, but I think I may have found the cause. The triangle dealy thing looks bent. But this may be a result of something else broken. I got tired of looking at it and gave up.