Starting to work on the flaws on my H2, one of which is the sunroof is frozen. Track is froze, motor and switch are good.

my question... if you drop the headliner will that give you good access to the track and cables?

My plan is to hopefully clean and lube the existing tracks/system nothing looks rusted that I can see.

 

Yes..... once you drop the headliner you can then remove the entire assembly. Its a bit of work - I've had mine out but I did have the headliner totally out.

There is not much you can do though other than cleaning and applying some grease to the actual tracks but it is a large and very complicated project to clean and lube the actual plastic covered cables that drive it.. The cables that the motors drives are enclosed in tubes and the cables have a plastic notched covering molded onto them which the gear on the motor drives. That plastic molded notched covering gets degraded and bits of it start to crumble away. There is no fix and there is no separate replacement parts for the cables. The entire cable, track, and frame assembly as considered one part and no new ones are available anymore. I had the entire assembly out and even pulled the entire cable assembly out of the tubes and confirmed, short of a specialized injection molding machine there is no way to replace the molded plastic on the cables. Also took a good bit of fiddling to get things back in sync and all lined back up and in the end I still had to assist it by hand to close it.

Honestly - unless you are going to source an entire replacement frame that is proven to be in good working order, the only thing you can really do is just open it all the way and clean the track areas on the left and right sides up a bit.

 

Thank you. When I first looked a this H2 the sunroof would try to open. It would move back and forth about 6 inches. Now it's stopped in the closed position but not fully seated to seal against rain.
my thought was to pull the headliner, look at the tracks and pray its something simple and while ive got it apart clean the drain tubes and do the marker lights.
my floor gets wet when it rains and im trying to stop that too.

 

Unfortunately I did not take any real good pictures of the track workings. This shows the entire assembly removed and the PDF is the sync procedure.

If the molded notched cable covering is chewed up there is really not much you can do other than forever assist it open/closed by hand while pressing the button. Cleaning out an old grease in the tracks will help it move a bit easier though as really old grease often tends to become more of an adhesive than a lubricant.

If I remember right, when you have the roof console removed to access the drive motor, you can see in a gap on the cable tubes where the motor gear drives the cables and you can see the white plastic molded drive cover on the cables and can probably even see spots where that is degraded and/or missing. Where that is missing, there is nothing for the motor gear to mesh onto in order to move the glass panel.

 

I despise sunroofs for this very issue, complicated, tough to repair and expensive and while mine is very much operational. I never open it. I do like to open the shade and get some solar warmth in the winter months, I think automakers should just do a solid glass roof panel with a manual sliding shade.

If I was in your shoes, I would try and get it to the closed position and call it good.

 

I'm gonna try to see if there's any hope for it. Hate the thought that it's there and not working. I'm like you though I don't really use them much. My 02 Avalanche has one that works fine and it's rate for me to use it.
I may well end up getting it to the closed position and calling it good.

 

You may want to read up on removing the sun visors, as the clips are a pain in the *** not to break.

 

Good point. I'd go so far as to say they that the visor attachment, in particular the swivel end, are a total nightmare and are a top candidate for the most aggravating and horribly designed parts of the entire vehicle and potentially could make it into a top 10 list of GM's worst engineering screw ups.

 

LOL. I have delayed taking out my headliner to put in rubberized sound proofing on the roof, just because of the sun visor clips.

I'll get to it this summer as I'm still chasing water leaks and would like the headliner out to do a thorough water test. Pain in the *** sunroof.

 

Excellent advice. I wasn't aware of that minefield lol.

I have a headliner removal video on YouTube bookmarked and I plan to watch it several times. My headliner is in really nice shape and I don't want to damage it either.