Power Sunroof Conversion by JonnyPhenomenon

7 minute read

Power Sunroof Conversion

Compliments of JonnyPhenomenon @ www.vwvortex.com

Are you tired of people waving to you every time you open your sunroof? if you have wanted to install power sunroof in your scirocco, but didn't know how it was done, then read on.

assuming you already have a rocco with a sunroof, then the first thing you need to do, is get a power sunroof motor and cover from an audi. the one I got was from an audi 4000, but I think you can get them from a 5000, among others. a simple search for "power sunroof" should yield some results on the tex.

I got this kit from a fellow vortexer:

as you can tell from the pic, it included the motor, the control relay, cover, dome light and switch. the motor has a mechanism that tells the relay when to run fast, slow, or stop. very clever!

The splines on the motors drive gear are a direct match to the ones in the rocco hand crank, and the screw holes are a match to the roof of the rocco, so it should bolt right in. - right?

Well, not exactly. There is some metal in the roof of the rocco that is in the way, so you will need a die grinder or a dremel with a cutoff wheel in order to cut this metal out. (wear safety glasses!) 

unfortunately for this thread, I do not have any pictures of what needs to be cut out.  but if someone will send me a pic of that section of the roof with the crank removed, I will make a diagram of what metal needs to be cut out. or you can just eyeball it and hack it up yourself. 

with the metal out of the way, the motor can be screwed right in place, but first you will want to time the motor. I did this by cranking the motor all the way to the rear with the hand crank, then powering up the motor and pressing the slide button until it stops. then I was able to install the motor in the roof and give it a test run. 

Power:

the sunroof motor uses a lot of juice to run. if you try to power it on the same circuit as your dome lights you will blow one fuse after another. I ran a new 14 gauge wire for power down the drivers side A pillar. this was honestly the hardest part of the job. it took me hours to get it through. HOURS. - regardless, once I had that through I put a 20 amp fuse on it and a found an open 12v on the back of the relay panel. no pics for his either. - sorry.

So now that the motor is installed, the cover needs to be made to fit. 

I don't have any good pictures of the cover "before" I modified it, and most of the pics of the "after" suck too, so bear with me. 

basically, I hacked off a ton of plastic from the back of the cover, then I attached a couple pieces of sheet metal to it so it could hook onto the roof and stay put. 

I peeled the skin off of it, and I recovered it with fabric that I used on my seats. a little bit of spray adhesive and it was good to go. 

I had to add a little piece of metal to the motor assembly in order for the cover to have something to hold onto. one of the metal bits I put on the cover hooks onto this, and the other one goes through the stock dome light hole. it is a really good snug fit that required very minor tuning to get it there.

I used tin snips on the sheet metal and a dremel for some of the finer stuff. a drill for the holes. while I have access to some fancy equipment, I didn't need any of it for this project.

in this pic you can see how I attached the "front hook" to the cover. this part slides into the old dome light hole. 

I screwed the bits of metal to the cover after pre drilling the plastic. then I ground off the ends of the screws so they didn't stick out. here is a pic of the screws. 

here it is almost installed. you can see the metal bit I attached to the motor assembly sticking out under the new roof liner. - please ignore the broken windshield in the background. 

here is a sketch of the metal bits I made which should give a better idea of what the hell Ive been rambling about all this time.

NOTE:

the motor I have is pretty tired and slow, and my sunroof is really stiff anyway, so I did my best to lube it all up. I still have to "help it along" on cold days tho. - but I am too cheap to go buy another motor in hopes it will be more energetic... (your mileage may vary.)

feel free to ask me any questions about the process.