Fixing my 3rd gen 4runner sunroof for less than $200

Hey There YouTube Welcome Back to the channel today we're going to show you how to fix the sunroof on your third gen Toyota 4Runner most people when their sunroof quits working it's because the cable that operates and and slides the sunroof forwards and backwards has seized up in this little track in a little pipe like this and when it gets stuck in there then the cable can't move and you're sunroof is broken so the common wisdom on the Internet is to either a replace the entire thing for $1,000 or go find one that kind of works from a junk hopefully works from a junkyard and then just put that one in uh I think that if yours is only as broken as mine was then you should be able to cut part of it out and then replace that one piece for only around $160 so watch with me and see how this works and hopefully you can do the same thing this is one of my first videos so uh try to bear with me as I make a few mistakes along the way and hopefully you guys get the idea of what needs to be done so let's get to it to remove the headliner the first thing you're want to do is pull all the clips like like this thing out of here to remove your uh handles you're going take a little screwdriver like this and then pry these little tabs out and then underneath you just take a Phillips and loosen both of those screws you want to pull your uh your emergency handle here up there and then on the front pillar this emergency handle the screws are super hard to remove uh I was able to use my impact wrench uh to get it off um but they've been lock tighted in there there a lot of people end up drilling them out or cutting the cutting a slid in the screw and then using a flat tip to turn it to remove the sunglass holder and map lights you're going to need your little screwdriver again there's a pry Point here and here try not to drop it and then in the hole right here is a screw then this entire thing slides forwards and down you can remove your clip which disconnects power to the lights and to the switch after you have that center console off if you remove these three screws then the rear viiew mirror will come off removing the visors is pretty easy there's two Phillips on the left hand side the right hand side there's one Phillips head on the back of that little latch and then you're going to need a trim tool with a clip like this to pry in the front and then on the right hand side because this one has the light built in uh there's going to be a little power plug inside uh above this connection here to remove your dome light you can take your little screwdriver and just pry underneath really gently on both sides the cover will will come off and then use your Phillips on these two screws here to go ahead and remove it in the back cargo area you're going to have four different clips that hold the headliner to the ceiling uh there're these round pieces here you're going to need a tool with an end like that to just get up underneath there and then pry down when I took them out because they were old and brittle I broke all of them except for one so you're going to want to order a few from the dealership with the part number right down there there are two underneath that uh back plastic trim that goes across the back of the car uh if you want to replace those you can you might be able to function without it each of these clips only cost me $150 so not too bad so you have to start in the rear and remove the the back trim and you can loosen just the top half and then put something about this far down uh to hold it away from the Sun the the headliner then you can take out this middle piece I found it easiest to just take the entire middle out uh you have to take the seat belt off to remove your seat belt you can just pry open this plastic and then remove this bolt it's a 14 mimer uh there's a screw right here that holds that piece on so you've got to take the bottom piece loose when you go to remove these trims uh there's a clip uh that attaches it to the car about every 4 in or so it gets you a little trim tool like this and up above it and then just pry uh and it should come loose uh so all the way across here and then a couple in this section and then again all the way across that pillar down all right so here I've got the trims pulled down far enough that we can slide the headliner back in above them uh before you remove your headliner you could do the same thing put a little piece of wood in the corner uh and or use a glove or a piece of foam or something just to kind of bend the top down enough to get the headliner in or out so after you have the headliner out uh you have to remove four drip tubes you just remove this clamp push it to the side and then pull the drip tubes off there's one in this corner one in that corner one in that corner and one back here in this that cord right there you have to take out of that little clamp it just pulls out uh get this out of the way push on this button here uh you can remove this clip uh and then those three bolts right there will take the motor off you have uh four bolts like this down the side one two three and then four down there and then there's two nuts one here and one there across the front so I've actually filmed this uh after reinstalling it this piece is installed in here originally and these little tabs grab onto this bolt and you've got to get up in there with some little screwdriver and bend them down enough for this to let go uh that's going to be the hardest part of that I would loosen these sides uh until this side could drop down a little bit or at least until there's a quarter inch or so below them and then on getting this guy down uh until he's out of the way and then you can drop the entire sunroof down we just uh set the front end on these headrests and uh with a couple people we just slid it out the back of the 4Runner so I didn't actually film taking this apart uh as I took it apart here we have my rebuilt unit ready to go back in the truck most people's sunroofs fail in this part of the cable Chase right here there's a lot of rust and corrosion inside the pipe right here and in order to get the pipes off of the cables you're going to have to cut them uh with the Dremel which we'll show you in a little bit but in order to cut the last few inches of that chase you have to get the drip tray out of the way the first thing you're going to need to do is release this clip on both sides uh pull this up and forward to take this drip tray off so in order to do that you need to remove these six scw three on each side and then you have to bend this piece down underneath and then you can finagle the drip tray out of the sunroof frame be very careful with it so far we've jumped ahead quite a bit in time here I started taking apart that left hand side attempting to rebuild the current cable Chase uh that's not going to work my plan had been to take apart the left side show you how to do the right side after I knew what I was doing uh that won't work so I'm going to repace place this cable Chase with a stock unit from Toyota and I will show you how to take what you have apart without destroying your expensive Carriage pieces but first I'm going to show you how this works and give you some pointers on how to rebuild one yourself and not make the same mistakes I did this bracket right here is where the motor is attached uh this is the gear from the motor that pushes on the cables to operate the two carriages that slide the window back and forward uh you've got a primary side of the cable Chase where which is actually attached to the carriage and then you have a secondary pipe that just handles the Overflow cable uh and keeps it contained as it's moving these secondary cable chases were actually fairly easy to to remove there's just a couple clips that hold it in and I was able to pull it off of the cable when I pulled it off the cable I found it wrapped in a very hard plasticky grease uh the grease had basically solidified completely and I was actually able to unspool it completely from cable The Next Step uh was to remove the primary side there's two screws right here that hold a mounting bracket to the main sunry frame I had removed those two screws and attempted to pull the primary s off it did not move and all it actually did was pull part of the carriage forward uh So my answer to that problem was to go ahead and use my Dremel and cut along the length of that pipe uh here is what that look looks like uh I had already straightened this Bend out and so I wasn't able to use this piece as a good template uh to bend a new one I had attempted to just copy the right hand side but the two sides aren't exactly the same so if you would bend the pipe that you want to replace it with so the first step in removing this cable Chase from The Carriage is to remove the two mounting screws right here the first screw can be reached simply by taking your screwdriver and sticking it down between the wind deflector and the carriage and you can reach that screw there to get to the second screw we're going to have to drill a hole in the carriage so that we can get our screwdriver down to where the screw is all right so to get to this screw you're going to need to drill through the carriage you can find the location to drill by putting a screwdriver between the carriage and the wind deflector and slightly PL prying out uh so I'm going to want my hole to be right there put my Center tap punch right above it so I can start my drill there uh I do have my drill bit is the same size as my screwdriver so that the hole doesn't need to be bigger than necessary with my whole drilled I can pry that uh wind deflector out again stick my screwdriver through the hole and then turn that screw with both of those screws removed we can pull the cable forward and as we do this the back is going to want to lift up but that lets you get enough of the cable out uh that you can clean the old grease off and cut this piece of copper pipe off without affecting any of your actual frame all right so I'm going to take my Dremel and I'm going to cut along the top of this pipe uh as the Dremel rotates this way if it catches it's going to want to push the Dremel this way if I had started from this side and worked back as it spun this way and if it caught it would jump back into the cable and cut some of that worm gear on the outside so you want to make sure you start the direction where as it spins if it catches it goes into what you haven't cut instead of back into the worm [Music] gear as you're cutting you want to just barely barely get through the copper pipe uh you don't want to get down at all into that worm gear see here I just barely hit that grease uh and then as you go you can take your screwdriver and stick it in there to hold the cable down away from the top of the copper pipe and if you need to you can even pry uh it open a little bit as you go just to make sure that cable stays down away from where you're cutting all right now that I've cut all the way along this pipe I can start prying it open just working my way along the pipe so that it will be loose enough that I can slide the pipe off of the cable and if I missed any spot or it wasn't quite through all the way this would be where I could go back and just touch it up it would be better to have missed a whole bunch of places than to have cut too deep into that worm gear all right so I've got it PRI apart and it's still not coming off so what I'm going to do is spray a bunch of brake cleaner in here and try to wash some of this corrosion out uh it seems that this top uh 6 or 7 in is the worst spot it's fairly loose through here um but just this part right here is so bad it's going to have to be cleaned out first so here you can see all of the nasty rust and corrosion uh from inside of that cable tray and then uh this is what our cable looks like it looks pretty bad and Rusty right now uh the other side cleaned up really nice and so the next step is to clean this old grease off of this cable uh you can just start down at any end and it will just unravel all the way down all the way to here all right so I've got my grease removed from the cable uh and I do have a bunch of rust that's here and doesn't want to try to clean up see if I can slide it through this tray I'm going to go ahead and take out this stop down at the end and then this piece of this Carriage needs to come off you can how does that come off I don't remember wasn't it just a little tap tap tap is that yes oh it's off what do you going to do about that well I don't know I don't know if we need that I don't know what it does maybe we buy another one from Toyota I figured I'd go ahead and share my screw-ups as well as my successes with you uh that little piece probably could stay in as you remove the carriage uh I will show you how to fix it if you do break it I tried to pry it out with the screwdriver uh I don't think there's a a better way it's just uh all caked in old nasty grease it's holding it together next I'm going to run some string around the back uh the back support uh this is actually where the cable attaches to this carriage I'm just going to put the string through here to give me something to pull on so I can try to pull the carriage out all right so with my string in there and a helper to help push the cable in I can pull back on this carriage and slide it all the way out so we can clean this assembly uh pick it apart put it back together get it all cleaned up and clean this cable off and then we're going to want to clean this entire track completely as well to clean inside this track uh you're just going to take a a rag of some kind and maybe a pick or something and just keep working it all the way through uh the track here this part down here has a bunch of grease and then along the outside edge there's a lot of grease down in here this is where the actual cable slides forwards and backwards that needs to be cleaned very well front to back and then the this surface here as well needs to be cleaned you can remove the screw here to lift up that wind deflector at the front this whole thing will pop up it comes back a little bit and then you can lift it up and put something underneath it to hold it up and this the rest of this piece uh slides forward and then comes up so you can clean that off and clean the rest of this track up here in the front the Carriage has uh this piece that slides back and forth in here and we need to get this part off in order to clean inside of there to do that you remove these two screws here they have a bunch of Loctite on them on so what I use is uh our Harbor Freight uh impact screwdriver you just stick this in here youve got your buddy hitting the screw and that loosens it up enough that you can turn [Music] it so if as we open this up you have this little bushing goes on that pin there and as this comes out there is a plastic bushing that goes in here so then clean all this up clean this grease out of here and clean all of this grease when you go to put it back together uh there is a little nub there that goes in this hole uh so just make sure that you get that line back up correctly to grease The Carriage I'm going to be using some white lithium grease uh I'm going to put a bunch in inside where these pieces slide together in here a little bit to hold this guy back on the little white bushing uh with a dob of grease in there to hold it in a little bit on the outside all right when reassembling this the cable piece attaches to the carriage on the opposite side of this plastic bushing mhm when working on these carriages and regreasing them you should work on only one at a time that way when you take this one apart and you can't remember how it goes back together you know it's the opposite of this one so this one the cable is sliding up uh towards the plastic bushing on the other side so I set this one up to to be the same I've actually got it set up to mirror the other side that little tiny bracket needs to go on the outside with the pointy part facing away from the cable the little lever arm that goes in between the two halves the metal bushing side goes in the bracket and then the plastic bushing goes against the main Carriage there are two little Nubs that you need to get lined up uh once you get it snapped onto those two little Nubs then you can reinstall the screws the screws do need some blue locktite uh to keep them in there and keep them tight before you screw everything tight make sure that the leather arm moves forward and backwards freely inside of there one thing to make sure is that this uh this slide or this tab is underneath the this other clip so that when it's when it's installed correctly this is below it and it will push up on that well guys I had this thing almost completely together and then I realized as I was putting on that what I thought was the last piece it should have been the first piece so I have taken it back apart I'm going to film the whole process again showing you the correct way to do this all right so started jump in again guys but that guy was lying to you there was so much grease on everything as I took it apart that um being able to put it back together again I wasn't really able to film things and keep my hands and my camera and everything clean so what I've done is I filmed what I could and I've just kind of cut all the different clips together so try to ignore some of the continuity errors wherein there's extra parts in some scenes and not in other scenes uh I do have all the steps put back together correctly even though it's greased here let's do a dry fit just to make sure everything works and then we'll grease it in a little bit on the back of the track uh you can see this little round spot that's where the cable will go we just feed that in there and then slide the cartridge forward as far as it'll go and again as you slide it in make sure that this tab is below this tab if you have this uh Carriage reinstalled correctly you should be able to operate it uh with your hands in all three operations you should be able to push on the cable and get the back to slide out and then it should slide away from you and then if you pull on the cable it should come back and that's that's the closed position and then raise it up to the Tilted position and you should be able to operate all three of those so before I reinstall the cartridges I'm going to go ahead and just put a bunch of grease and the track whereare slides and based on this old wear pattern you can see how far back this thing slides uh when it's in the fully retract position so I'm going to grease all the way to there uh on both sides to the track and on the other side of the sunroof last you're going to want to grease every spot that moves so a little bit of Grease here and here and here after we finish greasing these here we're going to set them aside uh and reinstall them later before reinstalling them I would also run a layer of Grease along the length of the cable to make sure it's completely saturated all right so I've got my drip tray cleaned I've got my cable Chase ready to go on this part of the bracket this Hol specifically goes underneath that hole right there so this part goes underneath but then the motor mounting bracket part needs to go on top of this part of the drip tray so you have to kind of finagle them together so again this cable Chase needs to be above this drip tray tube this needs to be on top of the drip tray and then that bracket and these holes line up together then we can push this whole piece into the sunroof frame as you're pushing it in make sure that the end of the cable Chase is making it into the sunroof frame so that you can install all the mount screws making sure that the drip tray here is underneath this piece of plastic here and that all the holes line up the easiest way to get all these holes to line up is to make sure this screw is removed so that this piece can move where it needs to be and then just Loosely get all three screws restarted and once they're all started then go ahead and tighten all of them up now we can do the same process on the other side all right with the drip tray and cable Chase installed correctly now we can reinstall our cable Carriage assembly and put this thing back together once and for all this piece goes on the back of these carriages you have to uh pry it out of there as I took this one apart uh the end snapped off so I've drilled a little little tiny hole in the end I've got a little screw if you put that back in there we can screw it together this is the side I didn't break I'm trying to squeeze it back in with this pair of adjustable pliers I'm going to wiggle it a little bit as I squeeze to try to work it in since it's a very tight fit okay now we can move the carriage forward to its final position as we pull on it we need to make sure that little bracket we just installed slides in the track as well next make sure that both of these two screws are tight that's for the handle of the cover and then you can reinstall the rear drip tray sliding it into the back first on both both sides and then snapping the front down into place here I'm reinstalling the two stops that keep the carriages from coming out the back end next there are six screws that mount the drip tray to the sunroof frame you can repeat the same three on the other side it might be useful to start the screws and then adjust the drip tray as you need to and then make them tight after you've got all three started with that we should be done rebuilding the frame go ahead and flip it back over and get the sunroof glass placed underneath it ready to go the goal is to use the scuff marks from where the nut was installed originally to hopefully get the glass back aligned where it needs to be so here the glass needs to move a little bit right there since I moved the glass on the other side of the frame this time I have to push on the actual Carriage itself and then tighten the nut when it's in the right spot somehow I forgot to film uh the process of putting the motor back into the carriage so I'm going to explain it here the things that you need to do as you're reinstalling it the motor does need to be installed back into the sunroof before you reinstall the headliner because there's a screw way back uh up there underneath above the headliner if we look at the way this thing operates normally when you push this button the top of this button it's the tilt down or open and then tilt up is going to be uh to tilt the sunroof up so normally when you push this button it just slides open on its own and then you can push the close button and you have to hold it and then it will stop in the middle so there it stopped and then pushing it again it stops in the Clos position if your sunroof quit working somewhere in the middle or in the open position or wherever uh and you've taken it apart to fix it or if you've run your motor since removing the sunroof the motor and the sunroof are not going to be correctly aligned with each other so before you install your headliner uh and before you install this motor if you connect up uh this connection here and this power connection here you can run the motor without it moving the sunroof and you're going to want to run it until you're going to want to push the open Button which is the top side you're going to want to push the open until it has this long Peri period of runtime and that will tell you that the sunroof or that the motor thinks that the sunroof is fully open and then you can push the close button or the bottom side you can push the close button until twice you have to run it once and I'm holding it and it's quit moving even though I'm still holding it so let go and then close again and so now the motor believes that the sunroof is in the closed position so when you rebuild your frame if you leave the motor in the closed position or when you reinstall the sunroof if you have the sunroof correctly positioned so that it is where you want it to be installed then you can put the motor back in and the sunroof will be closed and the motor will think it's closed and everything will work well after you bolt it up you can run through and check everything but basically that's what you have to do to make sure that the motor knows where the sunroof is and it doesn't keep trying to shove it uh further and further back or something weird all right and with that you should have a working sunroof thanks for sticking around and watching to the end hope this information will be helpful for you make sure you like And subscribe and I'll see you next time

Channel: Stuart's fixing things

Views: 5,625

Keywords: 3rd gen, toyota, 4runner, how-to, diy, repair, sunroof

Id: Zyowhm_AqWE

Length: 32min 16sec (1936 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 16 2024