Electric Horseshoe not working

[PeteE30Tourer]

Ever optomistic that we might actually get a summer this year, I thought I'd try to lower my 325 cab's roof yesterday. Although electric, the mechanism for lifting and lowering the hood has never worked (I have the repair plate from ebay to fit sometime), but the horseshoe has always done it's bit electrically - until now.

I've tried playing around with the position of the hood drive plate as I know that has a couple of microswitches that have to be in the right position for the horseshoe to move, but nothing. I then got my trusty voltmeter out and looked at every connector relating to all the microswitches (I believe there's 5 in all), but no volts anywhere - nor on the big multi-way connector to the control unit. Checked all the fuses in the engine compartment - all ok.

So what's going on??

[j4gz]

I had exactly the same prob mate mine was down to the bad weather we had ove the Xmas and new year period a lot of rain and snow. Basically the water got into the horseshoe area and got in the motors and wasn't escaping due to the water drains being blocked and the car was getting flooded so I had all my electrics for the roof out and could not lower it. I was having a replacement roof fitted at the time and the car was going in the body shop and I hd the roof off and the drains cleaned out which run from the horseshoe out to the sill near the side skirts once they were Clear roof back on and motors were left to dry out just popped out by pulling the levers and leaving them unlocked out of position.
I didn't have to mess with any microswitches the roof started to work again once the motors were dried out and pushed back in.

[PeteE30Tourer]

Thanks for this. Water ingress is certainly a possibility given that the car has been out in all weathers over the winter. I'll have to trace the wiring through to see if it's got submersed somewhere. The motors themselves are mounted high and dry, so I cant see that they will have been affected.