Glad to see a 'Vert board added to TGO. I've got a technical question that hopefully somebody here can tackle.



It's a 1988 Camaro IROC. You know that switch between the window switches? You press it to pop the tonneau cover. Well, that switch has been defunct for the past two years. I have to manually pop the tonneau cover with the backup cables.

To confirm that the switch itself wasn't bad, I took the switch off and tried to short the connection manually by crossing the wires. I can hear something trying to work when pressing or shorting the connection, but the cover doesn’t pop.

Any ideas?

 

So when you SHORT the wires together you hear the solinoids try and pop?

The 2 solinoids on my 91 vert are behind the rear panels where the speakers are.

Did you take a multi meter and see if the switch itself is good when you press it..

Oh wait your GK you might not know how to do that.lol.. J/k bud.

 

Just an idea:

Try pusing down on the tonneau cover when you push the switch. Mine doesn't release unless I push a little

 

Yes I can hear the solinoids try to do their thing. I tested the switch, the switch is good.I'll give that a shot...

 

I have to do that exact thing on mine. I've never even bothered to mess with it...I just figure it makes me the only one who knows how to pop it on my car.

 

Well there you go.

 

I thought you were supposed to push down a lil bit...I've never known another way LOL.

 

The sound you are hearing is probably not the solenoids firing or attempting to fire. I suspect that the noise you are hearing is the relay which is located under the shifter plate not far from the switch you are pushing.

My car acted the exact same way. If you checked voltage at the solenoids you would find that nothing is getting there. There is a good reason for this.

The toneau relase system was designed with a safety mechanism to prevent you from poping the Toneau cover with the trunk open. The mechanism is built in with the power trunk closer. If you pop off the back panel of the trunk and look at the door closer there is an electrical connection to the closer on the bottom of the unit toward the left side. On my car it was just disconnected. I slid the connector back onto the trunk closer and the release started working. If yours is connected then you might try shorting across the two pins in that connector with a test clip and see if that does the trick. It might be that your safety switch has malfunctioned.

That is a good easy thing to check. If that doesn't work I'll look a bit farther. I have a diagram that shows the circuit and when I had my interior out I traced every inch of it trying to find the problem that I just described.

Let us know if this works