Sunroof Rebuild

How do you rebuild a sunroof? It's much like the omnipresent necessity of any other mechanical part of your car, with moving and non-moving parts that require service with use. This is much like any equipment or device, really—maintain or die.


With the sunroof, the working parts include little more than the manual hinge (in the case of our '92 Mustang GT) and its subsystems, the tongue-and-receiver forward locators and the roof seal itself. What of this unit—simple in vision and not much more complicated by execution—would need your attention and a rebuild? All of it.

Starting Point
Start with one of the three main parts of the sunroof. We began with the least complicated of all incorporated elements, the front-edge locator tangs. Metal, plastic-coated and secured to the glass sunroof body with large (#3) Phillips bolts into receiving fasteners that terminate on the outside of the sunroof, we applied heavy but gentle torque and they eventually relented.


The plastic coating on the tangs was in good shape, so we chose not to replace them, instead cleaning up the hole into which they mount, chasing the threads of both nut and bolt, then added Loctite to the threads and sealed the hole with a butyl-based caulk to make sure water leakage would be kept to zero. You won't need much of the sealer, because if you apply too much you'll be cleaning it up off of the glass, inside and out, and it's a bear to remove. Silicone-based caulks would likely work too, but for us, that was in scarce supply. As for the female body inlet that inserts into the metal tongue, examine and verify their condition. In this case, they're rust-free, not brittle or cracked and sealed (again patchable with a little butyl).

Hinge and Keeper
Next on our list was the main sunroof actuator hinge and keeper, a combination of body latch, release mechanism and manual opener, located in the middle of the sunroof's inner-rear edge. Here was the second of two reasons for the need to rebuild the sunroof itself. This latch, which was anchored to the sunroof with two through-bolts much like those on the forward locator tangs, had developed a leak that dripped into the Mustang's interior during heavy rain. Suspect was the plastic bolt cap, which spanned both through-bolt holes on the sunroof's outside, having weathered a little and possibly pulled from its factory-sealed position.