Soft top only opens up half way then stops working... dead...

Alex Kiesl

Hi! I was not too active in the past months as I always wanted to wait until my Z is done to finally show some of the work and modifications I did to it... but as we all know... it's never finished. So shame on me for only reading and not posting.

I have quite a big issue with my 370Z Roadster at the moment and I could not really find anything in forums, neither here nor in the german or UK forums. I really hope someone here has an idea of what the cause of my soft top problem could be.

I usually drive top down every day - unless it's raining - and I never had any issues with the top. Even on low temperatures (southern part of Germany does not get tooo cold... maybe around 30°F) the top worked fine all the time. It's always parked in my garage, so there is never the chance it freezes. So all good here.

Now it happened that the soft top will only open half way... then stops working. It does not react to anything anymore... dead. It does not matter whether the engine is running or not, always the same ting.

First the rear part of the top folds up, then the rear part. The top cover folds up afterwards and that's how far it goes. It simply stops...

That's how it looks (not an actual picture of the car, but that's the only pic I have of the top folding up):


The only way to get the soft top back in closing position is to push it gently back, restart the car and press "CLOSE"... then it locks the top again.

Other than that I'm pretty clueless... as well as my Nissan dealer. I tried to get an error code via OBD2, but nothing there. Nissan said they found an error code which is "B177E 5th Bow Latch Close Sensor".

I would greatly appreciate any ideas, anything that may solve the problem or at least hint to a possible source of failure...

Thanks in advance and all the best from Stuttgart, Germany!

Alex