YELLOW LEVERS!
I thought I would share my repair on my A5 with you all, it may help others..
I bought a 2010 A5 with a hood that didn’t work, it had been stood for a year and had water ingress in the boot, ruined the amp all because the roof wasn’t shut correctly, after repairing the wiring to the F202 and replacing the F171 hall sensor things were looking good….
But now had to deal with the “Yellow Handles” which are not documented in
ERWIN or ELSA, I’d read somewhere that someone took their can to Audi for this issue and they sorted it in a couple of hours, so knowing this I was sure I could do the same.
When operating these yellow levers, it stops F290 and F291 from being operated and the hood won’t work, this is what the RSH looks like when the lever has been pulled -
Both Yellow levers had been operated in the past, someone must have manually had to put the roof up, I could not see how these worked inside the car, so being brave (or stupid) I managed to fix this issue, but I had no documented procedure to fix it, this is how to do it….
Pull down the trim to the left-hand and right-hand sides, you do not need to remove the full side trim
You may need to remove the AMP from the LSH, mine was in for repair so not shown...
Carefully unbolt the two yellow levels from the metal frame on each side, be careful not to drop the screws or damage the sensors, when they are loose and the screws are out, carefully remove the sensor from the lever assembly and remove the levers from both sides, once this is done you can see how they work. Basically the levers act as a “Cam” and force the internal mechanism to one side which then allows the VERY STRONG spring to press up on the lever to release the mechanism. When this happens it also pushes up the hydraulic ram up and moves the frame, it cannot be put back down without the yellow levers being reset
First Stage
You now need to get the yellow levers in their original positions, reset, this requires you to push down on the black plastic part within the lever assembly, which is tricky, they are very hard to move and managed to get mine back after one attempt…be careful, if the screwdriver slips you could break something, or put it through your foot!
One you have done this, reinstall the levers back in the car, being careful not to drop screws into the car and attaching the sensors carefully.
Second Stage
Now the levers are in the right position, we need to physically pull the metal mechanism down, this pushes the hydraulic rams down and makes F290 and F291 operated. This can be done by using force on the frame….pull /push down here….
These are difficult to photgraph in the car, so this is the best I can do...both of these photos show the yellow handles pulled, the roof will not work.
Left Side -
Right Side
Note the orange arrows showing where contact needs to be made between the frame and the Sesnors...
You can push the left side down by going thought the fabric areas shown here-
the right side can be access easily though the hinged flap that you pulled down at the start.
When these are fully pushed down they should look like this, ram retracted and theyellow handles reset -
Once they look like the above, the roof is ready to operate again, assuming no other faults!
Hope someone finds this of some help...