Hi all... took a few days to get this project completed, but I now have a working
Convertible top.. Yeah. I did cheat though, I didn't actually get the primary mechanisms to work, but Plan B ended up being fairly simple. I'll document for anyone else that abhors spending $500+ for a new
FEM or REM when the only issue is the
convertible top won't go up or down. Make note, I have a 2002 Bird, note sure if all version of this vintage series are the same... so do your research first.
Schematically, Plan B is pretty straight-forward as can be seen in the marked up picture attached. C4063 and C4064 which is accessed by removing the trunk center pocket and lifting up a little flap to get to the connector panel (4 plug-in relays, of which only 3 are occupied). The outer two are the ones of interest here, The Lower and Raise relays. Essentially all you need to do is apply a ground to pin 85 to energize one or the other relays and the top motor is directly engaged, bypassing all the "smart" electronics. Note, this also means some convenience (e.g. door window nudge down) and safety aspects (e.g detection of
hardtop installed) are bypassed to, so make sure you understand the consequences if trying this yourself.
Cleverly enough, the actual Raise/Lower switch from the dash (picture 4) does exactly what you want. I hand-marked the C2138 connector assignment for the 3 pins needed from this switch (note apparently some Birds used a 6-pin switch, some an 8-pin, but I did a side-by-side comparison so should be easy to adapt. The trick is either finding the connector or harness to adapt to for this purpose, or in my case I found the perfect little push-on connector at Advance Auto (picture 3). Next you just crimp a wires into the slide-on and push them onto the Raise/Lower switch. Mine took a little spreading with a flat-blade screwdriver, but otherwise was pretty simple.
Continued in next post.