Okay, here is a first draft for a DIY to manually unlock and open the 370Z roadster top. This may be the toughest part of the whole DIY diagnostic and repair, but I hear that it is not that bad once you know what you are doing. Thus, an improved DIY for manual unlocking would be great, and a video would be awesome! We need more photos and comments in order to create a really good DIY for this important step. Lookup, I hope that you can help us out with this.
To manually unlock the top, you need to unbolt the striker from the rear bow (the section with the rear window in it). It is located centrally under the end of the rear bow frame. This striker is the part that hooks into the rear bow lock, which is mounted under the tonneau cover tonneau cover = storage compartment cover). I will describe the process of striker removal below, but first some pics...
Striker unbolted from rear bow, but still inside the rear bow lock:
Striker removed from rear bow lock - see the striker, its two mounting bolts, and the clamp it is screwed into:
Striker as normally mounted on the rear bow:
Rear bow lock as mounted under the soft top storage (tonneau) cover:
Rear bow lock striker removal:
1) Remove storage lid deflector. That's the piece between the roll bars. Simply remove four mounting nuts and bolts. See attached pdf. Would appreciate comments and photos.
2) Remove "soft top cover inner": lift up "cover inner" marked as item 1 in attached pdf, and remove three inner clips marked as item 2. Would be nice to find a more descriptive name, and comments and photos would be helpful.
3) Remove both rear lock striker bolts (marked as item 3 in attached pdf) from the service hole. Would appreciate comments and photos.
Lift rear bow and front bow simultaneously. Now you can unlock the storage cover manually as described in your owner's manual (attaching and pulling on the cables in the trunk - would be nice to get some pics of this). Let me know when and if you need help.
Now you can start discovery, which we will get into in a follow-on post. You will have to attach and lock the striker and the rear bow lock again if you want to drive the car with the top up (or keep the rear bow lock removed and attach a bungee for temporary use).
Hope this helps, and looking forward to your comments,
Klaus