Hey all!
I bought my xk8 a few weeks ago and i'm still ironing things out including the convertible top. After a bunch of troubleshooting, concluded that the power/ground wires going into the front of the convertible top motor has a faulty connection. The top would only start to go up or down if someone was in the trunk "jiggling" the wires and holding them in a specific orientation until the top was up or down.

We took the front motor cap off to see if we could locate the bad connection. We saw that the power and ground wires went into a white circuit board but didn't notice any evidence of a faulty connection. We didn't have time that day to go any further so put it back together. We plan on taking the pump out and apart to see if we can repair it. Has anyone had any similar problems or experience taking the motor/pump apart?

 

Just a word of caution here. Although there is one black wire and one white wire, neither can be thought of as ground. The pump motor gets driven in both directions over the course of raising and lowering the top, and each of the two wires becomes "hot" or "ground" depending on where we are in the cycle.

The switching back and forth is done external to the pump body.

 

. . . and the electrical connectors to the two solenoids are difficult to remove. A number of units have been trashed by pulling the entire connector off the the side of the solenoid.

 

thanks for the tips! great things to know