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elerner61 · 05-07-2015, 09:20 AM

Hi Kimo,

My shaving the side of the rubber roller has indeed solved the top hanging up when opening. The rubber roller (I have seen some pictures indicated that on early Zeds it may have also been made of metal) is made of rather hard material. Trying to hack at it with an exacto knife would be more time consuming I feel than the full removal/repair/replace and it would be real ugly

.

Here's a step-by-step from my memory. Total time to do both rollers could be under 30 mins.
1. Open top (of course)
2. Remove both sun visors via two phillips screws for each sun visor
3. Grab plastic header cover with both hands (one near each sun visor) and pull rearwards. Your goal is to pull the header cover back two inches or so to help gain access to the latch baseplate mounting screws
4. Remove the two latch baseplate allen screws while holding down plastic header cover to gain access to screws
5. Remove latch baseplate from car
6. Examine the metal pin that the roller rotates around from each side, only one side of the pin is "serrated" so as to hold the pin in place. You want to punch this side out. If you can't identify which side it is, just guess. Worst case is you'll have to hammer the pin back in from the other side.
7. Position latch base plate over a socket or on a vise and using a small punch/nail/screw, apply hammer to remove the pin. It took one good shot. (tip: If you're using a screw to hammer out the pin, hold the screw with gloved fingers to avoid loss of blood from fingers)
8. Sand one side of the rubber roller until it fits into the baseplate with a small amount of play. I just used a piece or coarse sandpaper (dremel not needed)
9. Insert roller, insert pin, re-apply hammer and test to see that roller spins freely
10. Re-install baseplate and button everything up.

There are no electronics associated with the locking baseplate. Be careful when removing the baseplate screws since if they fall into the plastic header you may have to remove the plastic header to fish them out (accompanied by the required cursing).

05-07-2015, 09:20 AM	#11
elerner61 Major 157 Rep 1,107 Posts Drives: '07 Z4M Roadster Join Date: May 2011 Location: Mount Kisco, NY iTrader: (0)	Hi Kimo, My shaving the side of the rubber roller has indeed solved the top hanging up when opening. The rubber roller (I have seen some pictures indicated that on early Zeds it may have also been made of metal) is made of rather hard material. Trying to hack at it with an exacto knife would be more time consuming I feel than the full removal/repair/replace and it would be real ugly . Here's a step-by-step from my memory. Total time to do both rollers could be under 30 mins. 1. Open top (of course) 2. Remove both sun visors via two phillips screws for each sun visor 3. Grab plastic header cover with both hands (one near each sun visor) and pull rearwards. Your goal is to pull the header cover back two inches or so to help gain access to the latch baseplate mounting screws 4. Remove the two latch baseplate allen screws while holding down plastic header cover to gain access to screws 5. Remove latch baseplate from car 6. Examine the metal pin that the roller rotates around from each side, only one side of the pin is "serrated" so as to hold the pin in place. You want to punch this side out. If you can't identify which side it is, just guess. Worst case is you'll have to hammer the pin back in from the other side. 7. Position latch base plate over a socket or on a vise and using a small punch/nail/screw, apply hammer to remove the pin. It took one good shot. (tip: If you're using a screw to hammer out the pin, hold the screw with gloved fingers to avoid loss of blood from fingers) 8. Sand one side of the rubber roller until it fits into the baseplate with a small amount of play. I just used a piece or coarse sandpaper (dremel not needed) 9. Insert roller, insert pin, re-apply hammer and test to see that roller spins freely 10. Re-install baseplate and button everything up. There are no electronics associated with the locking baseplate. Be careful when removing the baseplate screws since if they fall into the plastic header you may have to remove the plastic header to fish them out (accompanied by the required cursing).
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