Bongo Fury

dunslair wrote:Best of luck in getting it up in the morning Mike, but remember your under doctors orders!! Try a little gentle bang first, nothing too energetic. It may be al you need to do the trick.

you can get viagra on prescription to help mike

After my hernia op I found it best to avoid even trying to get it up without a solid 4 week rest & recovery regime.

It must be sign.

mister munkey wrote:After my hernia op I found it best to avoid even trying to get it up without a solid 4 week rest & recovery regime.

It must be sign.

dunslair wrote:

mikeonb4c wrote:

dunslair wrote:Best of luck in getting it up in the morning Mike, but remember your under doctors orders!! Try a little gentle bang first, nothing too energetic. It may be al you need to do the trick.

I'm thinking it is just possible that the contents in the roof might have cuased the mechanism to strain when locking. If I can manage to pull them out through the open hatch, it might releive pressure on the locks

Sounds like a plan.... maybe your cat litter has expanded

Great minds think alike. I had that very same thought earlier. Then I remembered I'd not got a round tufittingit (similar to a round tuit but with some extra widgets) yet.

The motors are pretty powerful as I've lifted the roof with a fully laden safari-style roof rack. I wouldn't do it again, but it certainly has enough 'oomph' to overcome a sticky rubber seal. It could well be the extra goodies stuffed in the roof that are preventing the sliding arms at the front from disengaging from their latches.

I'm not aware of any means to lift the roof manually as you need access to the underside of the roof to disconnect the cable drive from the motors.

On the bright side Mike, the Big Boy Phat Tintop look might just catch on,

Simon Jones wrote:The motors are pretty powerful as I've lifted the roof with a fully laden safari-style roof rack. I wouldn't do it again, but it certainly has enough 'oomph' to overcome a sticky rubber seal. It could well be the extra goodies stuffed in the roof that are preventing the sliding arms at the front from disengaging from their latches.

I'm not aware of any means to lift the roof manually as you need access to the underside of the roof to disconnect the cable drive from the motors.

That's really helpful Simon and thanks. I too doubt the seal is sticky enough to prevent it from lifting though obviously I'll check it. I'll hope that I can persuade the contents to come out through the roof hatch and see if it frees up. Geoffs point about the way the latching works is valuable as it implies that the noise I'm hearing is the rollers trying to move back. It then stops, and I know from the drop in engine revs that there is a continuing load on the alternator. Put together, this suggests the motors are working but something is preventing proper motion of the mechanism. So I'll just for a bit of luck in getting the contents out etc.

I have a spare roof motor if needed Mike.

mister munkey wrote:I have a spare roof motor if needed Mike.

Thanks MM. Just managed to drag all the stored mattress stuff out through the hatch opening so now no pressure on roof from that, but it still shows no sign of movement except for the sound of the 'latches' trying to move (in fact I could only hear the offside one make much noise). Can't see anything else obvious like tent material displaced and jamming in anything (though its hard to ascertain that for sure). I'm going to check the fuse just to eliminate that, but then we are into real headscratching territory - how do you fix a faulty roof mechanism when you can't get at it

May not be relevant but I had trouble getting mine down once - at Pennington late autumn a couple of years back I believe.

I'd lowered it with the hatch closed & the roof mattress covering that little round flap that no-one seems to know the function of. Hence the roof tent billowed out & got trapped in the runners. (Ahh - Letting excess air out - Thats what its for!)

The following springtime, 1st opportunity to raise the roof, it refused to budge. Was a real bugger to get up but with a good half hour of rocking the switch combined with gentle assistance by four people to ease it up, it did get going although I now have a two foot long tear in the tent material.

Luckily though, my roof tent is almost the exact same shade of grey as duct tape so have a (from a distance) reasonably cheap repair.

But thats why I bought a motor, thought it needed more than just a fettle.

Hope you get to the bottom of your top trouble Mike, the PTube just won't work the same without that gravitational assistance.

mister munkey wrote:May not be relevant but I had trouble getting mine down once - at Pennington late autumn a couple of years back I believe.

I'd lowered it with the hatch closed & the roof mattress covering that little round flap that no-one seems to know the function of. Hence the roof tent billowed out & got trapped in the runners. (Ahh - Letting excess air out - Thats what its for!)

The following springtime, 1st opportunity to raise the roof, it refused to budge. Was a real bugger to get up but with a good half hour of rocking the switch combined with gentle assistance by four people to ease it up, it did get going although I now have a two foot long tear in the tent material.

Luckily though, my roof tent is almost the exact same shade of grey as duct tape so have a (from a distance) reasonably cheap repair.

But thats why I bought a motor, thought it needed more than just a fettle.

Hope you get to the bottom of your top trouble Mike, the PTube just won't work the same without that gravitational assistance.

Thanks Chris - your note has given me real hope. I need time and daylight to investigate further so will just have to tackle it in small chunks. Also can't do serious exertion at present what with the hernia op.

Hope you manage to get the roof up soon Mike - good luck.

aitch wrote:Hope you manage to get the roof up soon Mike - good luck.

Cheers old son. I reckon the ghost of Malcolm McLaren is taking his revenge on me for my remarks

My roof wouldn't go down while away last year so had to bring it down manually, had to remove motors to do this so it might not be possible to raise manually with motors still attached. Don't remember there being any solenoids in the system, there are a few microswitches at front and back of rails to cut power to motors when roof is fully up or down, and the mechanism locks in place when fully up or down. If you can get a couple of helpers to push the roof down at the front either side as you operate the up switch it might help the sliders unlock if the motors are struggling , as soon as it unlocks then pushing up will help motors to raise it. Pushing roof up before it's unlocked will make it harder for motors to release the locks. When I eventually got my roof up I found the problem was with the cable connectors at the back of the roof.

Right found the thread where the problem and its solutions are described by "mrsam" http://www.igmaynard.co.uk/bongo/forum/ ... =3&t=32088