Hi

The electric roof on my A4 has a fault it goes down but when I try to put the roof back up the windows go down and then the roof cover opens about an inch and then stops. Sometimes if you leave it for an hour or so it will work again - sometimes it will close on the key turned to luck but not always and other times it works fine. 

Any help or advice on where to start would be welcome?

Welcome to the forum Mark, you'll find the members on here are a friendly and helpful bunch 🙂 it could be a faulty motor. Can be fixed with a simple overhaul and less than £100 rather than £1500 quoted by Audi. One repairer is Autoelectron via Ebay:
http://myworld.ebay.co.uk/autoelectron
From what I hear they're very helpful and quick turnaround. Definitely worth checking out. I have no association with them. Or it could be one of the micro switches is stuck open and is preventing the system from continuing the full cycle.
 

Best way is to stick the manual key between the rear seat cavity and reset it manually.
move it up or down until fully close or fully open, remove the key and try with the switch, is always better with the engine running as it takes a lot of power to operate a full cycle.

Hope I've helped.

Cheers

Steve 

Hello Mark,

In addition to what Steve says, you cannot overlock the significance of the effect of a lack of lubrication on the moving parts of this assembly. 

The car is 12 years old, and it must be appreciated that the roof mechanism has been subjected to potentially harsh conditions over that number of years, where it will have suffered from varying degrees of humidity/condensation and heat. 

What we need to ask here is despite possibly a book full of the deemed important service history, has the hood mechanism/ linkages seen any form of lubrication in that time? 

Motor issues? Possibly? - but motors generally work or don’t work, and tend not the work properly when overloaded against resistance. 

Kind regards,

Gareth.