Hi all,

I have been having some trouble getting the top to lock properly in the down position (driving around with the alarm beeping) but recently the top refused to go up and I had to 'help' it with a bit of force. The latch locking it down refused to release on one side. After that everything was out of kilter and I had to close manually, after bypassing the hydraulic pump. It refused to go farther down than sunroof mode after that... So this evening I decided to sort the $%&*$ thing and to my surprise it opens and closes as if there is nothing wrong

I was wondering if there is any kind of maintenance I need to do, grease the rails perhaps? I am afraid it is going to fail expensively just before a downpour when I am a 3 hour drive from home. The advice from BMW seems to be "bring it in to replace the whole roof and don't forget to bring a credit card or two"




The latch that now works again!

 

The rails on the inside might have needed to be greased, also the cable system will need some grease or you can use a free all, light spray grease thats thin. Also when you put the top up any pivot points I grease. Sounds like it was just sticking. If you drive allot with the top down dirt gets into the rails and sticks to the old grease, I just cleaned mine out on the R52 and regrease.

 

Thanks, I do have the top down a lot. I will see if I can clean it up and regrease.

 

I feel your pain. Today I was working on my R57, finally got both sides to lock with the top open, but the top was a couple of inches away from the roll bar, so the car still didn't think it was locked in place, and dinged as usual, green light flashing, etc. So I adjusted the open catches out a bit on both sides. Then when it came down, only the driver's side locked properly. The passenger jaw locked, but above the catch.

And it stayed that way. The top wouldn't unlock and slide back to clear the roll bars. It just tried to go up,and wouldn't unlock the driver's side jaw.

Sure enough, out of nowhere, a storm rolled in and I couldn't do anything but put the windows up as a 1/2' of rain fell in about 5 minutes. I did pull the car under a tree, but we both got soaked anyway. Then the rain quit, sun came back out, and I drove 120 miles home from work with the top down, one side locked in, the other just locked. I put a plastic key id tag in the upper cluster of toggles, where the roof toggle is. That way the top wouldn't ding above 20 MPH - saving my sanity as I drove it for an hour and 20 minutes to get home.
Finally, after dinner, I forced the roof up far enough, manually, to undo the locked driver's side jaw from it's catch, and was able to reset the jaws to get the roof closed for the evening. What a major PITA. I also shop vac'd the carpet to remove the agua that had accumulated in the rear carpet,m and put another coat of Armourall on the interior. Love our Mini, but the roof issues are maddening!

 

The top on my wife's car will not retract fully. The first time we took it to be looked at they could not fix it and wanted me to bring it back. That was last year. I took the car in because the AC quit working and asked them to look at the top again. This is what they quoted me to fix the problem:

Convertible top soft cover assembly and rivets 10 hrs labor $1248.88
54-34-2-758-30 convertible top cover $3353.10
54-34-2-758-51 mounting kit, convertible $184.17
M/L/S $49.95
Tax $447.34
Total $5283.44
Not a cheap fix.

 

Wow that's expensive. So it was a broken cassette?

 

Don't know for sure. There is a seem just above the rear window that is coming loose. It appears that is getting hung on another cross bow not allowing the window to fall flat. I think they are just going to replace everything not knowing exactly what is causing the problem. I also have an extended service contract which is the only one I have ever purchased. Wouldn't own a Mini without one.