It was difficult for me to follow Aart’s method of releasing a stuck soft top storage compartment cover until I inspected the compartment itself. Of course if your compartment’s cover won’t open, you will not be able to inspect it. I intend for my description below to eliminate the necessity of your inspecting the compartment. Aart is using a putty knife to push down a mechanism that retracts a pin that locks down the cover of the storage compartment on each side. The compartment is U-shaped, and the locking pins are located inside the compartment at the front edge of each end of the “U.” The putty knife (or other implement) must, as Aart advises, be no more than 2 cm “thick.” At first I thought “cm” was a typo and should have been “mm,” and that the limitation in size was literally the thickness of the implement, because the implement must fit in the space between the front edges of the soft top storage compartment cover on each side of the car and the chrome piece that is opposite each of those front edges when the cover is closed. And yes, the implement must be thin enough to fit through that space, which is a few millimeters wide, to reach down into the storage compartment. But Aart’s 2 cm (centimeters) does not refer to that space at all. Rather, it refers to what I would call the width (rather than “thickness”) of the putty knife blade. The reason for the 2 cm limitation is that the mechanism that retracts the locking pin is itself nestled inside a topless metal “box” that is about 2 cm wide and is, of course, inside the compartment. If your putty knife or other implement exceeds the width of the topless box, it cannot get inside the box to contact the mechanism that retracts the locking pin. The reason Aart advises that the blade must tilt a bit (with handle tilting slightly toward the front of the car) is that if it goes straight down into the metal “box” it might not contact the mechanism. Pushing the mechanism down causes the pin to retract and the compartment cover to be released. Of course both pins—the one on the right side of the car and the one on the left side—must be released for the cover to open. The Technical Manual’s method of unlocking a stuck soft top storage compartment uses the hole that is in the middle of the front end of the boot (trunk). Within the soft top storage compartment and above that hole is a nut that connects together two sections of the cable that, when all is working properly, operates the pins that release the compartment cover. Moving that nut toward the driver side of the car will release the cover. That’s the good news. The bad news is that it takes quite a bit of strength to move it, perhaps because it moves both pins, left and right, at the same time. One more tip. I mentioned above that when the soft top compartment is closed, its two front ends (the tops of the “U”) line up opposite a chrome piece. That piece has a triangular shape, and an indented line runs the length of that chrome piece. The putty knife is inserted opposite the end of that line. When the blade is properly positioned, the chrome line will be almost exactly at the center of the blade. Stated differently, if the chrome line were extended onto the compartment cover, it would dissect the topless metal box in which sits the mechanism that releases the pins. Please forgive the length of this post, but I tried to write it in a way I would have understood it without having the ability to look into the storage compartment. Regards to all.
