I've been following CL for quite awhile now. I recently bought a 2006 GS300 and have experienced the stuck rear sunshade issue which I believe is a common issue. Mine gets to go up and down but only halfway up. Tried many things such as spraying lubricants etc but didn't work.

So finally decided to take the rear sunshade assembly apart to see what was wrong. Taking it out was not as difficult as some mentioned. Rear seats, side airbag covers, rear C pillar covers, 3rd brake light and sensor then the back board and finally the sunshade assembly. Got in there in under 30 Mins.

Tried to understand where it got stuck initially by checking the arms Etc but all was good. Eventually decided to open up the motor assembly (black box) and check out the motor and gears. Motor worked fine but one of the large gears had a broken teeth. Tried many fixes but eventually decided to buy the toughest steel epoxy in the market. Glued the broken teeth back and let it sit for 2 days to dry out.

Put all things back in reverse order and it worked like a charm.

I only managed to take some pics of the disassembly so here they are. Hope some of you will benefit from this and dare to take it apart yourself. Brand new sunshade is over a grand.

 

Nice great idea about the epoxy on the gear.

 

THANK YOU for this. I got mine stuck few weeks ago. glad i don't need to buy the whole thing to fix it.

thanks!!

 

Let us know if the epoxy holds. It's the gear metal or plastic?

 

The gears are metal. So I used the best epoxy I could find that was suitable for metal. Since the sunshade motor and gears do not operate in a high temperature environment, it should be fine. Unlike gears in the transmission or engine.

 

Thank you.

 

Awesome post, have the same problem as well, started doing it about a month ago!

 

Sorry searched and couldn't find anything. Has anyone ever found a gear for the motor or have the part number by any chance ??

 

thanks for the great write up. just finished fixing mine. instead of using epoxy i used some of that new UV glue. that stuff is pretty slick.

 

I just opened mine. Exactly the same issue and on the same theet ... mine was half broken ... I didn't glue it back or anything however I plan to glue it ... make a mold of it and then create it in wax in order to let it made a few times in metal as it seems to be impossible to order the part and a full shade costs around 2085 euro at the Lexus stealership.

 

stupid lexus didn't test the moving parts in this car.
everything with gears breaks fast in this car.... mirror, sunshade

 

Does anybody know how you call this type of gear wheel thing? I tried many things like half gear wheel etc however no luck on google. It can be something you can buy universal ... another option I'm thinking of is buying a full gear and grind away the not needed part ...

 

Here some pictures of mine ... the pasta/lube actually glued the little part between 2 teeth making the windscreen to block A friend of mine advised me to buy a full gear wheel and grind the unneeded tooth away with a stone grinder

 

My 2007 GS350 rear shade stop working, it just stay down and make a click sound when the rear shade button is pushed.
I was able to open the motor gear box, as suspected there are two half broken teeth on the large half tooth metal gear. After I removed the broken pieces and popped the motor aside, I was able to hand turn the gears back and forth and they seem to be still functioning fine, I reassembled the gears and the motor, partially remounted the shade and able to test it go up and down as normal. Put everything back and the rear shade is working perfectly fine even though there are two half broke teeth.

Thank you for the OP.

 

I know it's a super old thread, but the same exact thing happened to me in my 2011 GS450H. Mine got stuck in the up position, and I just left it there for months because I honestly didn't really care -- I was still able to mostly see through the back window. However after seeing how fixable this is, this is definitely queued as a small project for me. Kudos to OP.