Maserati 4200 gransport spyder roof adjustment

[Lou12345]

Can anyone help me please. My spyder roof won’t close electronically, the roof is going slightly too far over and the latch has damaged the plastic at the top of the windscreen.

Mike at the Maserati Shed has kindly helped me, but he has the same problem on his car. He is too busy with everyones cars to investigate. Does anyone know how it can be adjusted please?

 

[Rex B]

Hi
I would think this could be down to the elastic belts that are responsible for pulling sections of the frame backwards when opening the hood being stretched and worn. When closing the hood they also act as a restraint ensuring the hood drops down nicely onto the front screen. A new belt kit if around £400 and would need the out roof canvas removing to allow installation so a specialist job.

 

[Gooner]

Hi, I guess you might have seen this thread and my post about how I fixed my roof? Not much more to add to be honest. Mine never hit the windscreen surround hard enough to break it so you may have a different problem as well.

Hope this helps.

I fixed it this morning. Here are a few pictures.

The roof would stick at around this point on opening. It would carry on a little more but would clearly be stuck against something.

The problem is the cross bar connected to the bracket which is vertical in this picture.

It pivots freely but is actually supposed to be pulled backwards during the opening procedure. In fact if you stop the roof opening at this point and push it back to this position by hand, the roof will probably open OK (just this once).

The bar is supposed to be pulled back by this piece of elastic, one on each side of the car. It’s the piece I’m touching with the scissors. This elastic perishes over time and doesn’t pull the bar back.

I actually have three pieces, from previous repairs carried out before I owned the car. The piece that looks like a seatbelt, which I’m not touching, is a critical part of the roof and definitely must not be cut .

Unfortunately, the last repairer didn’t sew on the new elastic, but riveted it on. This made it very awkward to remove the old pieces, which I did very carefully with a Stanley knife. I also had to cut away the original stitching.

Ideally you would sew new elastic in place of the old. With the rivets in the way, I ended up cutting small slots in my new elastic strips and hooking them onto the rivets. Naturally in my excitement to take it for a test drive I forgot to take a picture but I’m sure you get the idea.

Hope this is useful to anyone struggling to work out where the elastic bands in a Spyder roof are and what needs replacing.

Edit:

I originally used dressmaking elastic etc. for waistbands. I doubled it over to get a bit more strength. 5cm was slightly too wide. Anything from about 3 cm would probably be fine.

Another edit:

I found that elastic wasn’t strong enough, so I switched to 3mm bungee cord. It’s surprising how taut it needs to be. I took advantage of the rivets. Not a neat job I know, but I guess it won’t be seen.

 

[Lou12345]

Thank you kindly for the help. My car already has bungee cord on between the 1st and 2nd bar. I think the elastic only helps the roof go down? When mine goes up it’s about 5mm too far forward and missing the latch at the top of the windscreen.

 

[Gooner]

Sorry, I misunderstood. Sounds to me like a more serious alignment problem, definitely beyond me. Has it suddenly gone wrong or just got worse over time?

If it was my roof, I’d try to find a convertible roof specialist to look at it. The design is a pretty common one so a roof specialist would be a better than a Maserati specialist IMHO (even better if they know both).

Sorry I can’t be more help.

 

[safrane]

5mm sound like a bump stop or two may have dropped off.

The only real way of finding out why it's travelling too far is to remove the outer skin.