THE PROBLEM
During the design process of our "ZippeeShade" which have designed exclusively for the Mini Cooper, I encountered a slight problem on my test vehicle, a 2003 Mini Cooper S. The problem I was facing was what seemed to be some kind of short circuit. The sunroof was working fine until one day without warning it opened half way and when I tried to close it, nothing happened, it would not close. When I depressed the switch to close the sunroof, all you can hear was a clicking noise from the relay. I located the fuse to see if it was blown, and to my surprise it wasnt. Now I was confused and even worse I was concerned that I would have to drive around with the sunroof stuck half way open. Luckily I went on Google to do some research and found tips on closing the sunroof manually. At the rear of your car there should be a Mini Cooper Tool Bag, which will contain an Allen wrench hand crank used to connect directly to the sunroof motor to manually close your sunroof. You can access your sunroof motor by removing the clock from the headliner and you will see the Allen wrench screw used to manually open and close the sunroof.
Next, I attempted to shop around for someone to fix my sunroof, and unfortunately I could not find any independent service center that had experience in repairing Mini Coopers. You would think that living in Las Vegas we would have more repair technicians to choose from other than the Mini Dealership, but I was wrong. I called the Mini Cooper dealership and the service advisor told me it could range from approximately $500-$800 to troubleshoot and possibly more to repair it depending on what they found to be the cause of the problem.
Feeling a little defeated by my Mini, I decided to build up enough courage to fix the sunroof myself. Hopefully this blog will find its way to other loyal Mini Cooper owners that could benefit from my experience and save themselves a small fortune.
THE SOLUTION
After many hours of troubleshooting I found the cause of my sunroof failure. It was due to a short circuit in the diode, located inside the motor housing. This diode was causing the motor to short out, rendering the motor inoperable. The fix was very simple, all I did was open the motor and use a pair of wire cutters to snip the diode wire disconnecting it and instantly the motor worked again. This was actually a really easy fix. Here are my step by step instructions along with photographs of what I had documented.
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