Hank928

Can someone please advise on how to remove the ceiling when there is a sunroof? I'm replacing my antenna and tried a shortcut, but no way...
Around the sunroof itself, is there any screws that I need to undo from "the top"? I've searched but haven't found any threads really describing this.

Not desperate yet.....

Thanks

Henrik

rexpontius

Hi Henrik

It is actually a pretty fiddly, and a few steps:

1 open sunroof almost all the way

Stick your head in the opening and look for 3
Screws holding the headliner on the sunroof panel

Slide out sunroof panel liner

Once you have the panel liner out, you can remove the sunroof from the tracks and carefully remove the sunroof panel itself.

Now you will see that the headliner is held by metal strips screwed from the top.

Remove them and peel away the headliner (is glued)

Maybe you can fix the antenna by only lowering the rear section of the headliner? It saves a bunch of work.

Cheers

Hank928

Thanks Rex,

OK, now I get why the panel still is rock solid.

Time to figure out a short cut

Henrik

Mrmerlin

I was wondering how the antenna is routed in your car,

last one I did had it going up the B pillar to the roof,
remove the sunroof motor cover to see the wires,
then the ant wire gets tucked into the edge of the quarter liner cover ,
then along the floor/rocker to the CE panel

Hank928

I've come so far that I can see that the cable is routed down the B-pillar
on the right hand side.
Since I will put in a new antenna cable all the way, I'm going to route it on the right hand side of the roof and down the A-pillar.
I think it will be too tight to even try to run it the original way.

DKWalser

Hank - If you're not going to use the original cable, should we assume that is because the original cable is in some way defective? If so, why not remove it and use the original route for running your new cable? I would think using the original route would create less opportunities for creating your own gremlins.

Mrmerlin

routing the cable along the floor will keep it further away from the engine thus reducing static from the ignition system.

NOTE the earlier cars had the antennas in the LR quarter away from the fuel pump,

The next gens had them buried into the windshield then they got installed to the roof

Hank928

Well, my car came with OEM mobile phone, but has been deleted long before I got the car. This means that the radio and phone uses the same antenna with a splitter. The antenna cable is bunched together with other cables going towards the dashboard. So I think it's difficult to route it the same way. By routing it from the ceiling down the a-pillar I will avoid things that could "disturb" the signal. Maybe I'm wrong.

Bilal928S4

Maybe use the old cable as a drag for the new cable. It will pull the new cable in the same location as the old one.

Hank928

That would have been a great idea but the cable goes into something like a wiring harness, and trying to separate it from the others will be complicated if not impossible.

Mrmerlin

lay your new cable alongside the old one as best you can,
I would recommend to not mess with the A pillars

Speedtoys

Someone have a photo of where the headliner is glued into the sunroof?

danglerb

I've seen cables for a cell phone mic routed in the A pillar, but not much space there as I recall.

Hank928

Now it's in place, and yes the A pillar was tricky to put back.
But the reception is great, even indoors.
The tricky part was to mount the new antenna base from the inside, I had to "make" a special tool from a sparkplug "tool" that belongs to my Honda trimmer.

Sorry for a blurry pic.

Speedtoys

Bump?