1968 XR7-G Hertz Restoration by XR7-Gry

3 minute(s) of a 214 minute read

Last week when I was done with the vinyl roof I pre-installed the sun roof mechanism to see if everything was OK, and if not to find out if there was something I needed. When I bought the car the sun roof did not work because the flexible drive cable was missing. Back then I was unable to find one so to make the lid functional I put in a newer motor and drive that comes from a 70's BMW or something. Today WCCC have those in stock so I ordered one from then to get my original system back in the car.  http://www2.cougarpartscatalog.com/sunroofflex.html When I installed the original gear system I instantly noticed that the gear that drives the sun roof cables was missing. Somehow the gear fell off and it is lost and nowhere to be found. No problem I thought, and removed the gear from the newer system, tried it on the original drive and it did not fit. That's when I knew I was in serious trouble   as I assumed these would be next to impossible to find. So I tried to search WCCC web site, but had no luck. Then I searched eBay, and wow, John Bennoit has a NOS gear there for sale for $100. Unfortunately money is a little tight at the moment (and I am also a little cheap   ) so I decided to figure out something else. That's when I remembered that I actually had a spare sun roof buried in my mothers garden. Back in 1981 I had a Opel Coupe with a factory sun roof. The car was extremely rusty, but the sun roof option was rare so we saved the sun roof. Years went by and the place where the sun roof rested ended up as a place where my parents put their garden waste, of course with the roof laying under everything. Today I decided to go there and dig out that old roof if there was anything left, and if so if the gear was there if it could be the same. It was a dirty job and it took me about an hour to dig that roof out of the dirt pile with good help from my nephew.    

As expected the roof was incredibly rusty after 31 years in the nature. The sun roof lid had to be removed using a crow bar, but believe it or not all the screws I had to loosen to open the tracks and sun roof drive came off easily and inside there I found the gear I was looking for. It did look like it might be correct, but I could not say for sure before I had it installed. 20 minutes later I was just a big smile, the gear was 100% correct.

That for sure made my day and experiences like this makes the hobby so much more fun.