stormchaser1967

Just bought a 95 Cabriolet. The power roof function did not work. After reading much about the subject through online forums. It turned out to be broken wires in the trunk buy the hinges from the flexing of open and closing the trunk. I read that this is the most common problem that happens to cause the roof malfunction. Was pretty pleased to get this working based on how problematic and expensive this issue can be. Interesting note. Just after I got the trunk wires fixed the emergency brake switch basically fell apart. So the dash light would not illuminate when applying the parking brake. The top was still not working. And when that happened a new problem appeared to where the top would not even unlatch from the window frame. Where as it did before. Had opening and closing the top manually. And now couldn't even do that. I found online about sticking a key in the hole behind the drivers sun shade to manually release it. And that worked. But would hate to have to go through that all the time. Figured it was related the parking brake switch breaking. I though I could just jumper the two brake switch wires together to bypass the switch and see if the top would now work since I had fixed the trunk wires. But when I jumpered them together it wouldn't work. As it turns out they have to be grounded to the switch frame body and needed a ground to work. When doing that the dash light came on and the top now worked. Also the security alarm system apparently wasn't working but now was operational after fixing all the wires also. Just thought I would share the info since the info I had found was so helpful. The parking break switch failing created an interesting little quirk. Oddly enough the part about grounding the switch wires came to me when me and my wife went for a ride in the car and I going over the switch circuit in my head and trying to figure out why I couldn't bypass the switch. And it occurred to me that it might need a ground in order to work. It was funny the previous owner who was an airplane mechanic never really made a serious effort to work out the convertible top issues for the 5 years his girlfriend had owned the car. And I had the car two days and fixed it. He told her about it and she was ribbing him and saying he just didn't care. LOL!