The owners manual for wife's 06 V70 warns about not getting wax on sunroof
rubber surrounding the opening. Why? I've been waxing cars for years with a variety of black rubber moldings and have never had trouble wiping off the wax before it dried and stuck like glue to rubber. Ditto for flat black paint on trim pieces.

Is there something special about the rubber compound?

Second question: can I use silicone on it to preserve it like I do with door seals?

Thank you.

Signed,
Confused & Baffled in Detroit

 

Irony about this post and I just got done detailing my 850 out!... Honestly if you look closer at the seat on the glass you will notice that the rubber had some felt like on it. Eventually if you put wax on that felt, it WILL dry out the seal and then crack. If you use wax on rubber seals (accidentally or not) usually will dry it. If you put liquid silicone, you should be ok. I waxed my car and then after all was done, I put liquid silicone on a paper towel and applied it to all the seals including the sunroof one! Obviously make sure that the sealis cleaned off. But silicone away!

 

Thanks. I never did take a peek at the glass itself, just the rubber 'grommet'(?) surrounding the opening. I'm an old silicone user myself on rubber seals, using exactly the same method you use. A GM engineer also taught me another trick is to spray silicone into the rubber channels the windows go up and down in....greatly lessens the strain on the power window motor. You need the small plastic tube that fits into the spray nozzle, and to wipe off excess or else it will creep all over your window glass, but its kept my power windows repair free. (Except for the damn cheapass Honda CRV with the fragile nylon gear that's integral with the motor, grrrrr, but I was lazy with maintenance on that car). Not had a Volvo long enough to know if theirs are a problem, but there does seem to be several threads about non-working windows to make me use that method.

 

I thought about doing that, but aren't you afraid of "crud buildup" in that channel with the lubricant attracting dirt,etc?? That's what keeps me from doing that.

 

I use the old screwdriver, brake cleaner and soft cloth method of cleaning them out from time to time. The trick, it seems, is to not go too heavy on the silicone. You don't want to spray it in so it runs over and out -- just a light spray. The cleaning takes little time. Just let it dry before you resilicone the channel. If your windows are at all "sticky", you'd think the motor suddenly got its own high pressure turbo.

 

I just know a little bit on the parts of a car and the detailing or waxing but i wanna try doing it myself.. Thanks for the trick technique posted here.