Hello all -- been enjoying my XJR quite a bit in the year or so I've had it, but one thing still nags at me and I'm not quite sure how to fix it. With the sunroof open, the factory pop-up wind deflector bounces around at highway speeds and makes a heck of a racket, along with the wind buffeting. No combination of windows up or down really resolves it. At this point, I'm wondering if it is somehow broken or missing parts? It doesn't seem like there is much too it other than the spring arms on each side that fit in to the track assembly. All of my other cars with sunroofs have never had an issue such as this. Has anyone else experienced anything like this and found a way to resolve it? I've looked at several parts diagrams and don't really see any parts that could be missing. Sunroof seems to work fine otherwise. Wondering if perhaps the spring arms have gotten weak with age and can perhaps be "re-bent" slightly to maybe help it out some.

Thanks!

 

Just ran across someone's excellent pics of the plastic arms that break along the tracks and maybe the final deflector flip up a few weeks back . The parts diagrams don't break it down very well

Looking

 

This out of a parts diagram that Don put up as an official name for the target part


Still looking for the poster's pics

Good pics in this post from years back

'96 sunroof parts needed - Jaguar Forums - Jaguar Enthusiasts Forum

 

So I've somewhat managed to fix the issue - in a nutshell, the spring arms were essentially weak. I managed to remove the deflector on its own and unfortunately broke it in the process. The plastic corner ends the spring arms attach to are hollow and quite delicate and one snapped while manipulating it out of the top of the car. I repaired it with a combination of super glue and plastic weld, filling in the hollow areas underneath with the plastic weld for additional mass/strength.

The spring arms are hooked into the sunroof track and with (A LOT) of care it is possible to move things around. This is old European Plastic after all. You need to move/manipulate the deflector side to side a bit so the small "feet" at each corner can be pushed back and around from the front lip of the roof so the deflector swings freely. Once these are up and away, carefully rotate the whole deflector upward to about noon and you should be able to slip and unhook the rear spring arms from the track. The spring arms unclip from the metal deflector by using a small screwdriver to poke the plastic "button" on the underside of it. They can then be slid out of the metal deflector and worked on separately.

I placed the metal portion of each spring arm in a small vise and carefully put more of an upward "bend" in them using my hands so that there would be more tension holding the deflector against the roof when the sunroof is opened. At this point, if you didn't break any of the plastic, things can be reassembled and reinstalled again carefully. In my case, additional repairs were needed, but I'm happy to say after an almost 5 hour drive each way and back to the Watkins Glen Grand Prix Festival this past weekend.... my sunroof is once again quiet when opened! No more rattling.

Stock Photos online of an un-broken spring arm:



Repaired and installed back on the car:

 

I have reached the point where I stopped opening the sunroof on the latest XJ6 because of all the issues I had with my previous car: taking it out, fixing it, and putting it back in. I got to the point where I could replace it in record time.