Hi
I have read all the soft top posts until I am blue in the face. Here is the issue. I have had the car to two different mercedes certified mechanics to try to fix the top.
The last mechanic, after having the car for 3 months, was finally able to get it to do all the steps to close except lock down the front latches. It does all the steps to open without fail. But to get it to this place, he replaced both the front locks, the drivers side window motor, sent the soft top controller to programa to make sure it was okay and spent hours upon hours of labor adjusting the microswitches. After 3 months he gave up, charging me $1300 for parts and labor saying "don't bring it back to me, I don't know what is wrong with it but I can't fix it" and "oh, by the way, it has gone up and down so many times the right rear cylinder is now leaking fluid". The car is right on the break line in production where some of the parts on the car are early 96 model year parts and others are very late 95. For example, the window motor has the halifax (halidex) disk that lets the top controller know it's location rather than microswitches in the bottom of the doors as the 95 would have. This fact took the last mechanic several days to figure out before he was able to make progress on getting the top to work. The top switch still blinks continuously. The roll bar light blinks continuously. When you start to drive off the warning "chime" chimes. The drivers window will not program to lower when the door is opened but the passengers works and programs fine.
To my knowledge, the car has never been in an accident. I bought the care from a mercedes dealer in New Mexico and the top worked 3 months then just all of a suddent developed the above issue.
The first mechanic had it for 6-7 months and never did get it to work, then charged me $1800 for labor, so the last mechanic made significant progress but it still is lacking. He said, you can bring it up manually and lock it, it will work fine. I told him, what is the point, it is supposed to come up on it's own.
The last mechanic's parting comment was maybe the pump is not putting out enough pressure to make the top come down hard enough to close the microswitches to make the top lock but I don't have anyway to test it and a new pump is a $1000 plus. After spending $3100 without the top working, I am gunshy about "investing" more money on guesses.
Here are my questions:
Is there someone who can rebuild the rear hydralic cylinders? MB has new ones but they are $800 plus and I have almost spent more that the car is worth.
Any ideas what more to try?

Rob
95 500 SL
Missouri

 

Rob,
If you use the forum's search tool near the center of the gray bar at the top of this page, with the search term, cylinder rebuilder you'll get a littany of posts that cover your specific situation, including the contact infor for the rebuilders.

 

there is a magnet on the roof/ soft top that i think makes a contact with the top of the window area...its in the center. its been a while but i think that also triggers something.....the very front latches should latch down before the rear window/bow...i think. there a bunch of micro switches and if one is malfunctioned then its possible the front laatches wont latch, you are able to manually latch the fronts down....right behind the sun visors.