I recently took my ES 250 in for some minor maintenance at an independent LEXUS repair shop located in Huntington Beach, CA. I mentioned to one of the owners that I had begun having a problem with the moonroof. Specifically, it was no longer opening or closing after I would depress the switch that controlled it. The motor still works and I can hear the cables go back and forth, yet the moonroof just sits there. Although I managed to close it by hand, the moonroof has not shut entirely in the back. Because of this I have been unable to wash the car for fear of getting water inside. He told me that the problem was a common one with LEXUS cars but that he could repair it. When I asked for an estimate, he came back with a quote of $433.00 to do the work. He justified the quote by saying that the repair was very labor intensive (the shop's labor charge is about $90 an hour). After picking myself up off the floor, I managed to decline the offer. Since then I have learned that this is normally considered a dealer-only repair and that even the parts are not available over-the-counter at one of the various parts chain stores. Does anyone have a(ny) suggestion(s) on how to proceed here?

 

sounds like the headliner has to come off for the repair, and that in itself is an intense job. if you feel confident enough with your mechanical skills, you can download the .pdf ffile for sunroof repair at http://techinfo.lexus.com and go on from there. From how it works, the sunroof motor is above the front dome lamp, and there are 2 cables that go around the opening that move the slider plates up and down. I toyed around on a Mercedes system, while similiar, the Mercedes system uses a cable-operated bridge to move the roof panel.

 

Thanks for the tip to visit the Technical Information Service website. What a great resource. Unfortunately, I did not find any section specifically dealing with "sunroof repair" in the repair manual for my car. Instead, I came across a roughly nine page PDF file entitled "Moon Roof Component" where I'm practically being asked to dismantle the car in order to fix my problem. For this non-mechanic, that is definitely a non-starter. So it would appear then that there was indeed something to what I was originally told about the repair being time-consuming (read: labor intensive). Unfortunately, that just brings me back to square one.