fateman
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- Mar 25, 2014
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I bought my sportback back in January and it came with broken latch on the rear sun shade, which didn't annoy me that much as I am only sitting in the front and the replacement bow would cost me 120⬠which is outrageous to say the least. However I want to have my car in fully functional condition so I gave it a shot and it was a success 
It is necessary to say that this repair is not applicable for everyone as the way the latch snaps is different every single time. What I would like to present is a solution I did on my car. You can get the idea how to proceed and see that it is not that difficult in the first place.
First you need to remove the sun shade bow from the rails. To do this you just pull one side of the shade towards the end so that the bow is positioned diagonally across the roof window. After that just push one side up to free the bow, then to the same with the other side and you have a bow freely hanging in the cabin.
After that pull off the sliders from both sides. they are not fastened in any way just use some force and they will come off.
Once they are off open the rear door or lower the window and slide the bow out of the curtain. At this point you want to have some kind of clip ready to secure the curtain and prevent it from rolling inside the roof at which point your job would get much more difficult. I used a clip we use in kitchen to close open flour or cereals so they don't get damp.
At this point you have a bow that we can further work with. Lock your car and go to your work room.
First thing to do with the bow is to separate the plastic part from the aluminium bar. Those two are glued together with some sort of black silicone. The way I did it was to take two small screwdrivers and pry it apart bit by bit, do not rush it or take large chunks as you might get lucky and break the thing. As you can see the plastic cover is glued by a silicone in the groves of the aluminium bar. Do not remove the silicone, you can assemble the two parts again without reapplying the silicone and it will hold as good as before.
Next step will be to disassemble the latch itself from the plastic bow. Latch holds in place by being pivoted around two small plastic shafts. you will need to free the latch from these. Be extra careful as they can snap easily. This was the most critical part of the repair in my opinion. You are left with the little sucker that costs 0,00001 cents to manufacture, however in Audi they decided that the best repair solution would be to replace the whole bow that costs 120â¬. Genius!
At this point you are going to improvise as I said at the beginning every snap is different. For inspiration below is a solution I used.
Simple solution would be to glue some piece of plastic with super-glue and wait for a week for it to snap again. I have on the other hand used a piece of aluminium sheet which after some tedious sawing, drilling, grinding, bending soldering and painting looked like this. Just to note, make sure that any parts you use are not blocking the mechanism so that you are able to open the latch once assembled. the Aluminium bar also restricts the usable place, so note the dimensions before disassembling the bow.
Once put together the bow looked like this. (I forgot to take pictures of bow with the aluminium bar, but you get the idea.)
All you are left with is to install the repaired bow in to the car. Installation is quite simple, just reverse the disassembly process. Slide the curtain out. Remove the clip from curtain. Slide in the the bow on to the curtain. Put on the sliders. Install the bow in to the rails. Test the latch and have a beer or two because you have just saved 120â¬!
Hope this helps anyone with a similar problem
It is necessary to say that this repair is not applicable for everyone as the way the latch snaps is different every single time. What I would like to present is a solution I did on my car. You can get the idea how to proceed and see that it is not that difficult in the first place.
First you need to remove the sun shade bow from the rails. To do this you just pull one side of the shade towards the end so that the bow is positioned diagonally across the roof window. After that just push one side up to free the bow, then to the same with the other side and you have a bow freely hanging in the cabin.
After that pull off the sliders from both sides. they are not fastened in any way just use some force and they will come off.
Once they are off open the rear door or lower the window and slide the bow out of the curtain. At this point you want to have some kind of clip ready to secure the curtain and prevent it from rolling inside the roof at which point your job would get much more difficult. I used a clip we use in kitchen to close open flour or cereals so they don't get damp.
At this point you have a bow that we can further work with. Lock your car and go to your work room.
First thing to do with the bow is to separate the plastic part from the aluminium bar. Those two are glued together with some sort of black silicone. The way I did it was to take two small screwdrivers and pry it apart bit by bit, do not rush it or take large chunks as you might get lucky and break the thing. As you can see the plastic cover is glued by a silicone in the groves of the aluminium bar. Do not remove the silicone, you can assemble the two parts again without reapplying the silicone and it will hold as good as before.
Next step will be to disassemble the latch itself from the plastic bow. Latch holds in place by being pivoted around two small plastic shafts. you will need to free the latch from these. Be extra careful as they can snap easily. This was the most critical part of the repair in my opinion. You are left with the little sucker that costs 0,00001 cents to manufacture, however in Audi they decided that the best repair solution would be to replace the whole bow that costs 120â¬. Genius!
At this point you are going to improvise as I said at the beginning every snap is different. For inspiration below is a solution I used.
Simple solution would be to glue some piece of plastic with super-glue and wait for a week for it to snap again. I have on the other hand used a piece of aluminium sheet which after some tedious sawing, drilling, grinding, bending soldering and painting looked like this. Just to note, make sure that any parts you use are not blocking the mechanism so that you are able to open the latch once assembled. the Aluminium bar also restricts the usable place, so note the dimensions before disassembling the bow.
Once put together the bow looked like this. (I forgot to take pictures of bow with the aluminium bar, but you get the idea.)
All you are left with is to install the repaired bow in to the car. Installation is quite simple, just reverse the disassembly process. Slide the curtain out. Remove the clip from curtain. Slide in the the bow on to the curtain. Put on the sliders. Install the bow in to the rails. Test the latch and have a beer or two because you have just saved 120â¬!
Hope this helps anyone with a similar problem
