For those that own Fords with those nice large sunroofs make sure you are exercising and lubing your sunroof seals. We didnt open the sunroof on the F450 for a long period and when the button was pressed the lift arms / cables broke. This is my fault but could have been prevented if I would have lubed the glass seals last year. I usually lube with a 3M silicon paste.
There is a lot of plastic in the sunroof track and when the glass sticks to the truck the plastic breaks. Ford quoted me $5200 for the repair and found a smaller shop that would do it for around $4000. I was able to get parts from Sunroofdoctor.com and repair it for $300 myself.
If you are in any Ford forums the sunroofs are nice but are known for lift arms or cables breaking. Keep the seals lubed so you can avoid my situation and if it breaks don’t pay Ford what they ask for those parts.
Makes me glad I ordered my F450 without the sunroof.
Good plan with researching what it took to DIY the repair and save a boat load of cash! The dealerships are always extra expensive and this certainly helps prove that.
I wouldnt get another truck with it for sure but I didn’t want it on this truck - the spouse won that one.
It does provide some nice views for the passengers at times when driving and gave us some good light while taking video in the truck. The Ford forums seem to have a lot of owners that have broken sunroofs once I did some searching. Makes it difficult when Ford wont sell the individual parts to correct it but instead the whole track at a significant cost. Glad the folks over at sunroofdoctor had recently starting reproducing cables. Good to be fixed.
Had one on the 2016 F350 and a friend had the large panorama on his F350 and they were nice, but the wife didn’t really like them so I skipped it on the F450. LOL
I read similar stories on the Ford forums and that helped seal the deal for me. I didn’t think the benefits of having one outweighed the potential problems that come with them. After 5 years now with the F450, we don’t miss the sunroof at all.
Did you have to just replace the lift arm or both the lift arm and the cable? The cable looks to be the more challenging piece to replace from the videos on that site.
I definitely won’t miss it on my next truck! Glad my F-150 doesn’t have a sunroof.
I had to replace both lift arms, the drip channel, and one of the cables one side. It failed while we were back East, and at the time, Sunroof Doctor didn’t carry the parts, Ford wouldn’t sell them, and the cables from Amazon were inaccurate.
