Rusty911
A2OC Donor
Ahh, that explains the MI Diagnostics for VW Commercial Engines software being included with the package then. Thanks Steve
Break, Bale or Bounce back?
- Thread starter Rusty911
- Start date
Ahh, that explains the MI Diagnostics for VW Commercial Engines software being included with the package then. Thanks Steve
Rusty911
A2OC Donor
Yes, sorry that was a rubbish picture!
I'll take more over the weekend and of any repairs that get done. I must add an advance thank-you to @depronman for all his advice on this and to @Kleynie for offer of help also.
Morning,
I would be too impatient to wait for the ECU return to give the VCDS a go!
I would give Autoscan a go (A2 is on the long drop down list), takes three to four minutes, I imagine it will come up 'Fail to connect' for the ECU but hopefully the other systems will be checked. You can then get depressed by the long list of Climate faults and door faults!
Andy
I would be too impatient to wait for the ECU return to give the VCDS a go!
I would give Autoscan a go (A2 is on the long drop down list), takes three to four minutes, I imagine it will come up 'Fail to connect' for the ECU but hopefully the other systems will be checked. You can then get depressed by the long list of Climate faults and door faults!
Andy
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Rusty911
A2OC Donor
I might pop it on the Passat at some point but priority is to get that roof fixed and back in: by time you've got the car, the roof and the interior bits including headlining, that's a lot of stuff getting in the way. Even the house feels pretty full. I don't answer to another half but the dog looks pretty unimpressed, and she's got very low standards.
Rusty911
A2OC Donor
Well, I've not got it apart yet, but it appears to have the two classic problems (this is not my knowledge I must say, but @depronman and @Kleynie 's combined help and wisdom
):1) The, and please excuse the technical description, 'BRRR Noise'. This is because the two halves of the cable-holding assembly fret away from the motor drive as a result of undersized / soft rivets. Solution is to clamp up the two halves back into position, redrill and refasten. I'm a little bit tempted to tap it M4, backed with nuts although 4mm rivets are the usual fix. If left as is, the drive 'gear' on the motor skips over the wound outer 'thread' on the roof cables.
2) If encouraged, the roof would sort of work but the motor would run for a bit before anything would happen in either direction. This is (again just what I've been told) because the plastic drive that links the cable to the leading glass dolly breaks. It still moves back and forth and one way or another still manages to catch the glass dolly somewhere, which makes it move. Sort of.
@Kleynie uses Audi repair plates to rectify this and @depronman fabricates his own solution. As I have a crude selection of machinery and means of getting things very hot here, I'll attempt the latter. This is largely driven by my financial meaness however, rather than Paul's engineering excellence ?
Silverpig
Member
I share and applaud your thrift, I only wish I also had your time, facilities and mechanical experience. I’d love to get my OSS operational but I just can’t justify the spend. It now also has a rattle from some dislodged part as a result of my unwise prodding a few weeks ago!Well, I've not got it apart yet, but it appears to have the two classic problems (this is not my knowledge I must say, but @depronman and @Kleynie 's combined help and wisdom
1) The, and please excuse the technical description, 'BRRR Noise'. This is because the two halves of the cable-holding assembly fret away from the motor drive as a result of undersized / soft rivets. Solution is to clamp up the two halves back into position, redrill and refasten. I'm a little bit tempted to tap it M4, backed with nuts although 4mm rivets are the usual fix. If left as is, the drive 'gear' on the motor skips over the wound outer 'thread' on the roof cables.
2) If encouraged, the roof would sort of work but the motor would run for a bit before anything would happen in either direction. This is (again just what I've been told) because the plastic drive that links the cable to the leading glass dolly breaks. It still moves back and forth and one way or another still manages to catch the glass dolly somewhere, which makes it move. Sort of.
@Kleynie uses Audi repair plates to rectify this and @depronman fabricates his own solution. As I have a crude selection of machinery and means of getting things very hot here, I'll attempt the latter. This is largely driven by my financial meaness however, rather than Paul's engineering excellence ?
Rusty911
A2OC Donor
I think it's safe to say I'm now well committed to doing something with the roof.
In order to get the sliding trucks out of the rails it seems you need to remove the rear glass panel. As well as being held in with five nuts, it's very much bonded to the rails over, what, a three inch area.
I would say to date, this has been the trickiest bit of the resto so far, although much of that is because I didn't really know where the bonding was.
I slit what I could with a Stanley knife and then modified a hacksaw blade into a sharp hook and for about 1 1/2 hours pecked away at the sealant. It then took a further 1/2 hour to carefully finally release the glass from the rails.
Tomorrow will hopefully dismantle the rest of the it and see where to go from there.
I have some Wurth PU Bond and Seal here which is black, flexible'ish and mightily strong so that's what I propose putting it back together with. Even so, I'm not entirely sure this thing will ever go back together again ...
In order to get the sliding trucks out of the rails it seems you need to remove the rear glass panel. As well as being held in with five nuts, it's very much bonded to the rails over, what, a three inch area.
I would say to date, this has been the trickiest bit of the resto so far, although much of that is because I didn't really know where the bonding was.
I slit what I could with a Stanley knife and then modified a hacksaw blade into a sharp hook and for about 1 1/2 hours pecked away at the sealant. It then took a further 1/2 hour to carefully finally release the glass from the rails.
Tomorrow will hopefully dismantle the rest of the it and see where to go from there.
I have some Wurth PU Bond and Seal here which is black, flexible'ish and mightily strong so that's what I propose putting it back together with. Even so, I'm not entirely sure this thing will ever go back together again ...
depronman
A2OC Donor
Barry
Yes it will
I assume you measured accurately the gap from front to rear glass before you removed the rear glass
If not then before you bond it back in place loosely fit the moving glass panels and align them so you know where the rear fix panel needs to be
You lucks your had an early oss the later ones have a countersunk screw hidden under the goo of the foam tape and until you have removed that the rear glass fixed panel will not move. Ask me how I know. Duh
Your well on the way
Remember when removing the rear trucks to push up the locking latch and then move it back. Failing to unlatch it properly and pulling the truck backwards results in a damaged and none repairable rear truck
Paul
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Rusty911
A2OC Donor
Thanks Paul!
Trucks on one side already out. I've left the other side in for now for reference. Just drawing up repair plates now. Frankly I'm thinking that as Audi repair plates are certainly metal and quite possibly steel (?) I might well simply weld an extension to the rear truck leg which would get me across to the drive cable. I.e. turn up a drive tube, dummy it up in place, tack it to the truck, remove and fully weld and then polish it right up. Was then just going to soft solder on a couple of brass sliders to the faces of the truck foot.
And, no, I didn't measure the rear but there are very clear washer marks etc to give me a starting point. Good tip on resting in the other two bits of glass though, thank you ? Will be sure to support the roof evenly whilst I do that to avoid bunching or stretching of the various bits of glass (misleading gaps).
I've also got the drive casting and tubes removed from the front so can rivet / bolt it up properly on the bench.
Trucks on one side already out. I've left the other side in for now for reference. Just drawing up repair plates now. Frankly I'm thinking that as Audi repair plates are certainly metal and quite possibly steel (?) I might well simply weld an extension to the rear truck leg which would get me across to the drive cable. I.e. turn up a drive tube, dummy it up in place, tack it to the truck, remove and fully weld and then polish it right up. Was then just going to soft solder on a couple of brass sliders to the faces of the truck foot.
And, no, I didn't measure the rear but there are very clear washer marks etc to give me a starting point. Good tip on resting in the other two bits of glass though, thank you ? Will be sure to support the roof evenly whilst I do that to avoid bunching or stretching of the various bits of glass (misleading gaps).
I've also got the drive casting and tubes removed from the front so can rivet / bolt it up properly on the bench.
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Rusty911
A2OC Donor
Thank you, very much appreciated ?
Rusty911
A2OC Donor
Just to run through why OSS's sometimes need this work: symptom is that the roof motor runs a while before anything happens, roof might not open evenly, certainly won't open all the way back. Upon closing (if it does) motor might run for a bit before the roof starts to move.
What's happening is the plastic 'driver' has broken off and just runs up and down next to the truck until it hits something and starts driving the roof. I'd imagine soon enough one side or the other will break off completely and then you're in all sorts of trouble, esp if it's raining. I'd now know what to do to close it, but it would be a right regal pain and you'd want some tools.
Anyway, with the roof out and the rear off, I could follow @depronman 's advice and slide the trucks out rearwards.
You can see the bit that fails. The cable runs in an extruded keyhole channel. It attaches to the leading truck by a thin plastic socket that gets tagged to the rear inside truck foot. The plastic is unbelievably thin and it's amazing it works at all. Even on a well serviced roof the forces required to make it work are substantial.
The Audi approved fix doesn't involve a roof-strip so they supply a bridging plate that gets bolted to the truck foot. This plate has a thread type form on the inside edge that engages with the drive spiral of the cable. This is an odd solution to my mind as each tooth is a pyramid, so effectively the plate must be trying to ride up the spiral, forcing the cable away from the truck. It obviously works though and certainly saves the huge hassle of a roof removal and strip.
Anyway, Paul fabricates something more akin to the original design but in brass. After a false start with a particularly weak magnet, I realised the truck was steel. If it's steel I could easily weld it I thought.
My solution, such as it is, was to turn up a cylinder and a ferrule for each side, use the roof extrusion as a jig and simply weld the cylinder to the truck foot.
What's happening is the plastic 'driver' has broken off and just runs up and down next to the truck until it hits something and starts driving the roof. I'd imagine soon enough one side or the other will break off completely and then you're in all sorts of trouble, esp if it's raining. I'd now know what to do to close it, but it would be a right regal pain and you'd want some tools.
Anyway, with the roof out and the rear off, I could follow @depronman 's advice and slide the trucks out rearwards.
You can see the bit that fails. The cable runs in an extruded keyhole channel. It attaches to the leading truck by a thin plastic socket that gets tagged to the rear inside truck foot. The plastic is unbelievably thin and it's amazing it works at all. Even on a well serviced roof the forces required to make it work are substantial.
The Audi approved fix doesn't involve a roof-strip so they supply a bridging plate that gets bolted to the truck foot. This plate has a thread type form on the inside edge that engages with the drive spiral of the cable. This is an odd solution to my mind as each tooth is a pyramid, so effectively the plate must be trying to ride up the spiral, forcing the cable away from the truck. It obviously works though and certainly saves the huge hassle of a roof removal and strip.
Anyway, Paul fabricates something more akin to the original design but in brass. After a false start with a particularly weak magnet, I realised the truck was steel. If it's steel I could easily weld it I thought.
My solution, such as it is, was to turn up a cylinder and a ferrule for each side, use the roof extrusion as a jig and simply weld the cylinder to the truck foot.
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Rusty911
A2OC Donor
I'd already cleaned the roof extrusions right up and tried the truck back and forth before the modification. Therefore, when I tried it post-mod I could just fettle the new metal until everything ran at least as well as before.
I was going to soft solder on some little brass runners to replicate the plastic sliders of the original but actually concluded to have a little bit of space around the new bit would be better. I just put it on the polishing mop, polished it to a high shine and left it as steel. It's running in grease anyway.
All cleaned up and tested:
I was going to soft solder on some little brass runners to replicate the plastic sliders of the original but actually concluded to have a little bit of space around the new bit would be better. I just put it on the polishing mop, polished it to a high shine and left it as steel. It's running in grease anyway.
All cleaned up and tested:
Joga
A2OC Donor
Interesting, thanks for sharing. How does the wire get fixed to the cylinder?
Rusty911
A2OC Donor
The final part of the overhaul is the motor-cable drive casting.
This is cast from two halves and part of the casting makes deform-able 'rivets'. These are tiny and the stresses of the cables trying to push away from the motor drive gear forces them apart. When this happens, you can hear the motor 'BBRRR'ing over the cable.
The solution is to clamp them together (hard), drill and rivet. I elected to keep the existing ones and just added a couple of new 4mm ones. I just used standard aluminum ones and re-tightened the originals. The casting is so thin and weedy I couldn't see there was much to gain by going bigger or stronger with my rivets.
You can see the gap in the centre: it was about three times bigger than this.
New rivets:
One important thing of note: I managed to close the housing still further as I had a feeling the cable would still slip. This meant I had to remove a little of the circular motor-locating housing as I realised when pushing the motor into place, it was forcing the housing back out, defeating the object of the game. I notice that as well as the riveting becoming lose, the rear of the brass tubes had some wear so by time you combine these you can see why the poor motor slips over the cables.
This is cast from two halves and part of the casting makes deform-able 'rivets'. These are tiny and the stresses of the cables trying to push away from the motor drive gear forces them apart. When this happens, you can hear the motor 'BBRRR'ing over the cable.
The solution is to clamp them together (hard), drill and rivet. I elected to keep the existing ones and just added a couple of new 4mm ones. I just used standard aluminum ones and re-tightened the originals. The casting is so thin and weedy I couldn't see there was much to gain by going bigger or stronger with my rivets.
You can see the gap in the centre: it was about three times bigger than this.
New rivets:
One important thing of note: I managed to close the housing still further as I had a feeling the cable would still slip. This meant I had to remove a little of the circular motor-locating housing as I realised when pushing the motor into place, it was forcing the housing back out, defeating the object of the game. I notice that as well as the riveting becoming lose, the rear of the brass tubes had some wear so by time you combine these you can see why the poor motor slips over the cables.
gills
A2OC Donor
Very neat fix - well done! Seeing something like this always makes me wish I could weld well, but I was only ever mediocre (even using TIG with expert supervision!)
Rusty911
A2OC Donor
The bit welded to the foot is just a sliding fit over the wire and is allowed to move. The ferrule behind it is the bit that holds it together. This is the same arrangement as the original.
The ferrule is a tight fit over the wire and crimped by means of a blunt cold-chisel and the edges of the vice jaws. I tried to pull each one out and reckon I got just about my whole weight on them.
As it happens, the hardest work the cables do is pushing, which is when glass panel number one runs back and the trucks hit and collects the rear trucks.
Running the other way takes a fraction of the effort as I found out during my manual testing.
Force required to send both panels back at point they first meet is huge. Nothing wrong with this particular example: all sliders etc perfect and this was when out of the car so completely un-stressed. They have a lot of 'anti-rattle' things going on and I think the friction of these builds up.
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Rusty911
A2OC Donor
With the rear panel bonded and bolted back in, everything greased as appropriate and new sealing tape applied, the roof was lifted back in (again, flying solo).
Hooked it all up and works fine. Front section in-particular fairly flies up and down. When the stacking process is completed the roof goes all the way back properly. There's obviously no slack in the running and all the gaps have worked out the same as they did before it came apart.
One tricky thing was getting the roof to sit low down enough in the car: despite first appearances, you can't simply wind up all the nuts and bolts to pull the roof down into place. You have to put external pressure on to sit the roof down and only then do the fixings up. The bolts interact with self-levelers which are very clever but effectively lock the roof off at whatever height you've dialed in. Genius design but bit of a pain if you're working alone.
Anyway, here it is:
Hooked it all up and works fine. Front section in-particular fairly flies up and down. When the stacking process is completed the roof goes all the way back properly. There's obviously no slack in the running and all the gaps have worked out the same as they did before it came apart.
One tricky thing was getting the roof to sit low down enough in the car: despite first appearances, you can't simply wind up all the nuts and bolts to pull the roof down into place. You have to put external pressure on to sit the roof down and only then do the fixings up. The bolts interact with self-levelers which are very clever but effectively lock the roof off at whatever height you've dialed in. Genius design but bit of a pain if you're working alone.
Anyway, here it is:
Rusty911
A2OC Donor
Now just need to finish getting the interior back in.
Costs? Not much. Some grease which I had: just normal lithium multi-purpose. I can't see why you'd need anything special: it runs in a tight temperature range, at slow speeds with low contact patch loading.
1/3rd roll of RS sealing tape, so under £4.
Bit's of steel and welding: not going to count that. Coffee consumed during whole process probably cost more and even that's instant.
1/3rd bottle seal restorer: say £3.50.
I already had some Wurth Bond and Seal, but let's say 1/ 6th tube. £1.
I'd say under £10 all in? I can't think of anything else.
What I would say however is I was lucky that feet aside, nothing was actually broken. I didn't have to replace impossible to fabricate parts (e.g. all those little sliding feet: 3D print @depronman ?).
Also, it was a lot of heavy, tricky work. Doing this commercially, for someone else with some sort of warranty? No thanks, I'll leave it to the experts. The price @Kleynie charges is a stonking bargain and I'm sure can cover the full range of issues without batting an eyelid. I suspect I've been let off lightly with this one.
Would I recommend you give it a go? Realistically you'd have to be very keen, quite well equipped, happy to have car off the road for a bit, have a garage big enough for both roof (with room to work) and the car. Not to mention that whole 'have a go' engineering aptitude. If you have, then go for it.
Also, I'm not sure all the trucks are steel: if others are plastic or aluminum my repair method becomes moot.
So ... if I was to buy another car with a broken roof, yes, I'd do it again. Does it put me off having a car with OSS? Yes, it does really: if nothing else it's massively heavy for what you gain. I think they should have done a fixed pan roof with a retracting blind. Far lighter, stiffens the car, no reliability issues. On the other hand, I might well come to love it if / when the car gets some actual use.
Anyway, once the rest of the interior is in I'll move on to whatever's next. Literally can't remember what that is!
Costs? Not much. Some grease which I had: just normal lithium multi-purpose. I can't see why you'd need anything special: it runs in a tight temperature range, at slow speeds with low contact patch loading.
1/3rd roll of RS sealing tape, so under £4.
Bit's of steel and welding: not going to count that. Coffee consumed during whole process probably cost more and even that's instant.
1/3rd bottle seal restorer: say £3.50.
I already had some Wurth Bond and Seal, but let's say 1/ 6th tube. £1.
I'd say under £10 all in? I can't think of anything else.
What I would say however is I was lucky that feet aside, nothing was actually broken. I didn't have to replace impossible to fabricate parts (e.g. all those little sliding feet: 3D print @depronman ?).
Also, it was a lot of heavy, tricky work. Doing this commercially, for someone else with some sort of warranty? No thanks, I'll leave it to the experts. The price @Kleynie charges is a stonking bargain and I'm sure can cover the full range of issues without batting an eyelid. I suspect I've been let off lightly with this one.
Would I recommend you give it a go? Realistically you'd have to be very keen, quite well equipped, happy to have car off the road for a bit, have a garage big enough for both roof (with room to work) and the car. Not to mention that whole 'have a go' engineering aptitude. If you have, then go for it.
Also, I'm not sure all the trucks are steel: if others are plastic or aluminum my repair method becomes moot.
So ... if I was to buy another car with a broken roof, yes, I'd do it again. Does it put me off having a car with OSS? Yes, it does really: if nothing else it's massively heavy for what you gain. I think they should have done a fixed pan roof with a retracting blind. Far lighter, stiffens the car, no reliability issues. On the other hand, I might well come to love it if / when the car gets some actual use.
Anyway, once the rest of the interior is in I'll move on to whatever's next. Literally can't remember what that is!
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