All,

I bought another $1000 volvo. This time a 2004 C70. I owned a 2004 S80 a couple years ago. I buy cheap cars and beat on them until they die. I sure do love a 5 cylinder Volvo turbo.

Anyways, enough about me.

I picked up a 2004 Volvo C70 soft top in decent shape. I'd love to get the top down, and have got it down with an allen wrench. I've searched multiple threads and seen all kinds of failure modes but none like mine. When I press the top down button(with parking brake applied and in N or P) nothing happens. No light, No chime. Windows all work. I can't seem to find another failure like mine.

Any Ideas?

 

Welcome to the club! I have some details on my experiences with mine here:

https://volvoforums.com/forum/volvo-...40/#post506087

The TL;DR is: the electric roof is probably the biggest sticky point.

Regarding your specific issue, I too have the exact problem and its likely the motor which controls the door which opens up. This motor was just taken out of mine and it read "Made in Germany" as did a few of the other components I could make out, so C70 MK1 is a essentially P80 coupe with a German manufactured roof and roof mechanism for better or worse. Roof components were difficult but not impossible to source, but labor time on disassembling it is ridiculous. Please see my link for more detail on the saga of my C70.

 

That gives me a starting point. I put my multimeter on the front motor(between sunvisors) and had no voltage when the button was pressed. Maybe it's the rear motor. The whole thing is so intricate there's so many possible failure points. It is frustrating getting nothing. I'll check voltage to the rear motor and see if anything happens when the switch turns.

If not, I do have a set of 3/8 allen metric hex and a cordless impact..........

 

The roof does not always want to be your friend, and mine is a very clean unabused example. I believe there are actually three motors, L, R, and the one which opens the door. I have the part number I ordered in that link, we're waiting on more parts before its finished (rubber bits, not sure I ordered them before Christmas and have yet to arrive). Randy had to rip out the back seat in order to get to it, I'm not sure if the roof can be down when working on the mechanism (I certainly hope so).

 

I found the circuit breakers under the dash had been pulled. The hood chime as well. The switch was also disconnected. Apparently a previous owner got tired of the chiming.

After all that I now have...

A flashing convertible switch and nothing happens when I press it.

Getting closer. Anybody shed any light what I should look for next?

 

I am fairly certain mine does not flash in its current state, I'd check it but I was told its partially disconnected still and to not attempt to use it. To my recollection over the summer when it mostly worked, when you push down the first thing that should happen is the door/rear windows will come down two or three inches. If you push it and nothing happens, this is more or less the state mine is in now. When it works I believe the order is: the windows come down, the rear part of the roof drops, the rear storage door opens up, then the rear motors fire to start retracting the main roof. If you don't know the history of the car you may also want to consider the roof was/is disconnected by the previous owner as there is a manual method to raise and lower the roof (which is how my mechanic was able to return mine to me disconnected).

 

Don’t if this has been fixed yet but 28carslater is pretty close. As the rear storage cover comes up, the front motor between the visors activates to unlock the front of the top. Then the magic happens. There are about 6-8 micro switches on the top to trigger different movements. I believe there are two on the passenger side at the first bend, one on each side at the main retracting motors, one or two at the corbeau cover, and one at the first unlock mechanism under the cover. I’d check the switches first if everything else checked out.

 

I am sitting in my Volvo right now and when you press the top down button and yes you're correct when my windows worked all four would drop like 3 in and at the same time that was happening the two hooks in the back first detach and then the rear glass folds up flat to the back almost leaning back towards the driver at a 45° angle and once it hits that spot you hear that it hits a microprocessor or whatnot and then the warm drive in between the visors starts unscrewing unlocking the top as this is happening the whole rear cover that hides the convertible top when up it is inside the vehicle and when the convertible top is down it's the big door that opens and lets it retract into it that big door is about 6 in open when the motor in between the visors is unwinding and unlocking itself and once it gets done unlocking itself it jumps up and all heads back like an accordion and starts to disappear down into the Giant false area that was made for your convertible top to hide in. And then as the top is sucked into the area there's two little plastic like hiding covers that are on a metal arm they're about 8 in x 4 in and match the interior as the top is coming down about halfway down it pulls those two down and then the door connects with those and makes a final seal I have to manually put my driver side down because I broke the metal hook off that pulls it down. And yes then it rolls the windows back up and does a chime all the while the light on the button and orange light is lit up. It's funny because my power windows quit working because my top leaks so bad and my rear window is about to fall out but I guess I'm lucky that my top works at all it works perfectly actually, so I just thought I would try to help as much as I can because I know trying to fix things on these '04 C70 convertibles can be very difficult. For example my windows I was driving in a rainstorm and all four of my windows went halfway down and then three of them came all the way back up the right rear stayed halfway down and they've never worked since except for the drivers window. They don't even go down for the convertible top! Good luck, Matt

 

The final fix ended up being replacing the motor which controls the storage lid and then the subsequent rubber pulleys which the motor uses to raise and lower the lid. We had to source the rubber pulleys from eBay because Volvo didn't have the side we needed, the whole unit there was about $250 shipped and the motor was $300 from Volvo.

Additional: The original issue was one of the rubber pulleys got caught in the lid motor and chewed up, presumably breaking the lid's motor. So if your door fails to open with no chime or blinking as I recall, this may be what happened.