[jhill11]

Was driving last night with my sunroof open. Heard something crack and the found later plastic pieces of the shoe on the right side of the car. I can't find the part number or a replacement. Dealership is closed today for super bowl. The window is stuck on tilt and I would love to get this part replaced asap so I can close the window. Its been nasty weather in Chicago. pic is the non broken side. I need the bottom part that the "Y" looking piece fits in to.

GLA 250 2015. Base

 

[jhill11]

Guess my link for pic didn't work. So i uploaded it...

 

[Sorayuthw]

This may help.

 

[Boxster986S]

Was driving last night with my sunroof open. Heard something crack and the found later plastic pieces of the shoe on the right side of the car. I can't find the part number or a replacement. Dealership is closed today for super bowl. The window is stuck on tilt and I would love to get this part replaced asap so I can close the window. Its been nasty weather in Chicago. pic is the non broken side. I need the bottom part that the "Y" looking piece fits in to.

GLA 250 2015. Base

I hope you've got some warranty left. My sun roof track had a similar failure on the passenger side about a year before my warranty ran out.

 

[captaingsxr1]

So did you get this fixed and what was the outcome? Mine has the same problem, the roof stopped working and I found pieces of the bracket in the rail.

 

[GLA Malta 004]

Hi everyone, I purchased a GLA220 CDI (2015 year of manufacture) with panoramic sunroof from Malta. I recently had heard a piece of plastic snap whilst driving with sunroof open (at normal speed). I found a very small piece of plastic in the rail. It was the rail guide shoe - same exact piece of plastic in the picture posted by jhill11 above (part of the bottom piece under the Y broke off).

Is it possible to change this part (and, possibly, the one on the other side since presumably both have weakened) or do you need to purchase the whole rail? Also, would they need to dismantle the entire sunroof (and headliner) or can the simply replace this part?

Thanks

 

[Koyot303]

I hope I can save you some time here. The same happened to me. Not sure why those pads were made of plastic. I bought the replacement pads on eBay thinking that they could be replaced upon light inspection. Unfortunately that's not the case. The headliner need to come off. I was able to jam in one pad by force which allowed me to close the moonroof, and I left it like that. This happened at 53k miles. I believe that extended warranty doesn't cover this.

 

[GLA Malta 004]

Thanks. Yes the mechanic advised me the entire roof would need to come up, including headliner. He also said you'd need to replace rails, which sounds a bit much for a plastic shoe. I agreed, it's ridiculous that these are made of plastic.

 

[Markbv]

I have the same problem and I was told the whole sunroof needs to be replaced. That's a bit steep for a small part that is obviously not fit for purpose.

 

[power1478]

2 clips 12$ Mercedes CLA Class Sunroof Repair Clips Parts CLA180 CLA200 CLA250 CLA45 CLA220 | eBay

 

[BrentGLA]

This JUST happened to me and my GLA is out of warranty. Some quick googling shows that this is a problem on a bunch of different Mercedes, but the big problem is that you can’t manually close a GLA’s sunroof! What if this happened while I was driving and it started pouring down rain?? Why is the sunroof held in place by crappy plastic?

 

[Whiterabbitt]

happened to me awhile ago too. Driving on the freeway and opened the moonroof and heard a CLUNK. roof was fully extended up, it was only held in by the metal pin loose in the rail. Good thing that metal pin is wider than the rail, or else my entire panoramic roof would have flown up and over the car from the wind force.

Never had time to deal with it, just closed the roof and it's been like that. I can see this is exaclty the issue, those triangle clips went.

Thanks for the ebay link, that helps ALOT. So off I go to try to get those things shoehorned back in place.

I have to believe there is a way to get it done (without major replacements), even if it has to be jammed ot get into place, even if the headliner has to come off, I cannot credit that the whole rail would need to come out to fix this one.

 

[BrentGLA]

Yeah I feel like their should be some sort of safety recall done for this. We got 5 inches of rain later in the day and thank goodness I was home by then otherwise I would have been driving with water just pouring in my car or watching it fill up on the side of the road.

 

[Whiterabbitt]

that's not a safety issue, that's a reliability issue. The part has to be plastic or else there would be seizing issues with the moon roof. a bearing would have made a $4 part a $40 part. It makes sense why MB did what they did. It's just serendipity (bad serendipity) that the part seems to be too brittle, and not easily serviced.

 

[Huey52]

These types of plastic Sun/Moonroof clips are and have been a common configuration on many vehicles for many years now. So common in fact that some have 3D-printer data files available, but I haven't seen this specific one.

As Whiterabitt cited it's one of many cost conscious parts in the automotive industry. A Rolls Royce likely has a bearing costing 10x as much.

 

[BrentGLA]

Yeah a bearing would be great, and right now I’m really wishing there was a $40 bearing...or just a better fix. I’ve ordered that part from eBay so we will see how it goes!

 

[Whiterabbitt]

OK, my parts arrived.

It's definitely not easy to pop in. the rail stiffness is high, and the pin is just wide enough to clear the rail. I don't see the benefit in dropping the headliner, I don't see a path to slide these into place from the front or back of the rail, even if I have it sitting on a bench in front of me.

A possible clue is on youtube. someone's attempt to fix this, "mistakes were made" or somtehing along the key words. The video is a failure to solve the problem, but in the comments is the clue. Someone was able to shoehorn them into place with some gentle help. I will attempt that when I have enough time to remove the pano roof to get rail access.

 

[Wayne]

Let us know what happens and includes video ...

 

[Sheef]

I had the faced almost similar issue as my tilt was not closing completely, I couldn't see any broken parts or anything but I don't know y my roof was not closing 100%. But everything else was working perfectly. I took to the dealer for service and they said since the vehicle was out of warranty like around 5 months back you need to replace the whole sunroof rails which will cost me something around 1250USD and as a goodwill gesture they said they will avoid the labor cost involved in it. But I haven't agreed to it as I can't believe MB is producing such low quality parts for the cars for which we have spend a lot like this?. And who knows even if replace this entire rail system after 1 year this won't again end up in the same issue?

I need some help guys. This really ridiculous.

 

[Whiterabbitt]

Well, i got them in place in-situ, but i don’t want to go into too much detail yet because they needed to be seriously modified to hammer into place, and might not be a sound fix. Need to check performance over the next few weeks.

my only worry is if it’s perfectly serviceable except when driving >60mph, i don’t really want to repeat all 4 guides breaking simultaneously at freeway speeds. Not a test I really want to administer...