Top Partially Failed Today; Could Fix Be This Easy

[78F350]

Originally Posted by austinporsche

... I have 15+ cars and 5 motorcycles, ...

If you are not already on The GRM forums, you should probably go there. It's like a support group/gathering of enablers for people with 15+ cars and 5 motorcycles.
https://grassrootsmotorsports.com/forum/latest-topics/

[austinporsche]

Lol, you're not the first to suggest an intervention. Unfortunately, I hang around with other like-minded folks, so it becomes a bit of a bubble (all have at least 4 cars beyond the daily driver).

I put the top in service mode again, took off those plastic hinge covers, poked around (I now understand that it is the hydraulic pivot arm that moves the clamshell and not the other pivot arm) and played around with jiggling the clamshell on both sides.

My problem side (passenger side), clearly has more play in it than the other side.

Problem appears to be that I have some "slack" in the transmission on one side that is not present on the other. I am pretty sure that this "play" (about 5 degrees of free rotational movement in the passenger transmission, zero play at all in the driver side transmission) is keeping that side of the clamshell from pulling down as snugly as I would like. FYI, I checked the V/boomerang arm bolt to be sure it was tight in case that's where the play was and it was tight.

Looks like I am either going to have to rebuild that transmission with a new plastic gear or find a good used one.

Thoughts?

[78F350]

Replacing the plastic gears is pretty straight forward and Pelican has a good tech article on the procedure. There's probably a dozen YouTubes too.

Tip: I bought the cheapest gears I could find on eBay thinking that they were all the same. Bad decision. The left and right side gears are supposed to be angled in opposite directions. The ones I received were marked Left and Right, but both angled the same. I didn't find out it was wrong until after I had the top all back together. Buy from a place like Pelican, ECS, or FCP Euro (I don't think actual dealerships sell them).