I don't seem to be having much luck with this car, with its
squeaky dashboard / windscreen fault and now a convertible top that is reluctant to close.
Sunday was sunny and mild, so on a drive out, I decided to lower the convertible roof for the first time since before Christmas. That was fine, however, the problem came later when I tried to raise the roof. With the car stopped, handbrake on, engine running, I pressed the switch above the rear view mirror forwards, to raise the top. The four windows, proceeded to drop halfway, as per normal, but then the convertible top refused to close - it made a bit of "electric motor" noise, but didn't actually move. Instead, I got a warning bleep and the display on the rev counter changed to the "Soft top unlocked" symbol in red (as shown on p133 of the car's manual). I checked for obstructions - there were none, I checked to see that the parcel shelf was resting on the switch that permits the soft top to operate - it was, I checked that the "easy access" handles were in their correct positions - and they were. I toggled the convertible top operation switch back to fully "open" then changed again to "close". This time the top closed and I put it down to a momentary glitch, although the top has worked without any problems on all previous occasions.
Much later in the day, I went out again, and once more lowered the top. When I came to raise the top, once again it refused to raise once the windows had lowered to their half way position, with the same error message on the rev counter display. This time, no amount of toggling of the switch seemed to work. I drove the car a bit more, stopped and tried again. Several times it refused to raise and then eventually it decided to raise, although I did note that at the end of the top closing operation, only 3 windows had fully closed. The driver's window had not closed properly.
An hour or so later, with the car on my drive, I decided to test the top a final time. With the engine running, the top lowered with no problems. The top then refused to raise once more... I fully lowered all four windows manually, and after a bit of toggling on the open/close switch (i.e. it still didn't work first time), the car decided that the top was ok to raise and it closed. However, once again the driver's window did not close all the way.
Not sure if the driver's window issue is related to the top not wanting to close, but I have noticed that over time, it is closing with more and more of a "clunk" than the passenger side window, and that sometimes, as it goes up on a close operation, it stops before it closes and opens again, as if it's detected and obstruction. This seems to be a common problem with Second Generation cars judging by the threads on here, but given mine was only built in Sept 2009, you'd think they'd have fixed it by now. I don't see how this would stop the convertible top from closing though, especially if I had manually lowered the windows fully and the top still wouldn't work...
The car is going into the dealer on Tuesday to have the intermittent squeaky dashboard / windscreen issue looked at, so now I guess they will be investigating this too.
I'm beginning to wish I still had my 3rd Gen MX-5 with it's manual fold top. At least that always worked! The manual close procedure for the Mini just doesn't bear thinking about...
