Alright, so I just got this car used (01 with 37k miles on it). First car I have bought (paying for it myself etc - I'm 20 years old) so I of course was excited from night to day and couldn't get a wink of sleep. A big up from my 98 Civic EX that my parents bought me in high school. Anyway, I was stupid enough to put the top up and down while the engine wasn't running (showing my family/brother/sister) so it pretty much killed my battery - dumb enough. The battery died the next day, becuase I was learning to drive the car, this is my first manual car so I needed practice. I of course stalled a good couple of times before I got the hang of it, then I was about to go driving again and it wouldn't start. I got a jump start from my dad and then it was fine after that. Well yesterday I was driving with the top down, and when I got to my friends house I was trying to putting the top up but it didnt go up. I had to try a couple of times and I was tyring to force it a little. After 3 minutes it finally went up. I was kind of worried, but this morning I took it out again. Drove it around for 20 minutes and then I pulled over and tried to put the top down but it wouldnt go down. I thought it was strange, drove it around for 5 more minutes and then got home. I then tried to put the top down again and it went up and down fine (tried it maybe 4 times up and down). weird. I'm thinking it might be the battery or maybe a fuse but I am not too sure. Putting the driver side window down doesnt work all the time either. Sometimes it'll go down all the way and sometimes it wont (when you press on it past the click so that it automatically goes down- as well as when you drop the top when the windows are up, the passenger window goes all the way down by itself but the driverside window only goes down 2 inches) Anyone ever experience this problem or maybe know whats going on? Any help or advice would be appreciated.

 

Are you sure you are putting your handbrake up every time you try to raise or lower the top? It only works with the handbrake up.

 

I don't think running the soft top up and down a few time with the engine off will deplete your battery unless your battery was already low or failing.

 

Now that I think about it, I dont think the Ebrake was up the times that I was trying to lower and raise the top. Thats a relief, I thought I was going to have to spend some money to get that fixed. What about the driverside automatic down window though? Thanks for the info Dan I didn't know i'm still a s2k newbie, glad i got this car though

 

It sounds like you might have a bad driver's window regulator. You can try resetting it, but if that doesn't work you can either live with it or get it fixed.

Good luck.

 

the window is a known problem that has occured to other people. Judging by your information, I'd say it's out of warranty so you might have to pay out of pocket to get it fixed. Try what allkingz recommended first.

 

Obviously, you have an extremely weak battery which will not hold a charge. 3 to 4 years is apparently the battery's normal life span. The window regulator is probably not worth fixing - and it is a known problem. Try running the window all the way down, holding the button for a second or two after the window bottoms out. Then run it all the way up, doing the same. Repeat a couple of times. The auto down feature may work again after this resetting. Then it may stop working again, in a while.

I have used the reset, and it will work for a day or two. I can live with the regulator problem, which does not forecast that the window mechanism itself will fail.