Thanks everyone that contributed to this post - it has helped substantially with my recent moonroof efforts.
I would like to add a few things from my experience though in hopes that they'll help someone else out down the road:
1) My moonroof was seized up solid, the cable in the tubing took me hours of heating and bending to loosen up. Once I finally got it out the tubing was almost straight and had to be re-worked back to a factory shape. Huge PITA.
2) The rubber coating was pretty good on one of my cables but the other one was toast. After trying to strip it off piece by piece over the course of a half hour I decided to put the end in a drill and hold a box cutter in the grove while I *slowly* spun the cable. Two words of caution about this though - this is obviously unsafe so do it at your own risk and there is a pin in the track-piece that can come out. remove the pin and the arm so you don't fling the pin out. If you do however lose the pin a small piece of wire will retain the arm since the pin/wire will be enclosed in the track, preventing it from coming out.
3) Once all of the plastic is off both cables use a heavy grease on them. I believe the previous owner of my 4Runner used some white lithium grease before and that was part of the problem. Based on my experiences with it and the positive experience of those on the forum I expect like most things, there are cheap and expensive options for lithium grease and you get what you pay for. I personally used a heavier gear grease figuring it would last longer (I've had that can for over 20 years in the Houston heat/humidity and it's still as "greasy" as the day we bought it).
I would like to add a few things from my experience though in hopes that they'll help someone else out down the road:
1) My moonroof was seized up solid, the cable in the tubing took me hours of heating and bending to loosen up. Once I finally got it out the tubing was almost straight and had to be re-worked back to a factory shape. Huge PITA.
2) The rubber coating was pretty good on one of my cables but the other one was toast. After trying to strip it off piece by piece over the course of a half hour I decided to put the end in a drill and hold a box cutter in the grove while I *slowly* spun the cable. Two words of caution about this though - this is obviously unsafe so do it at your own risk and there is a pin in the track-piece that can come out. remove the pin and the arm so you don't fling the pin out. If you do however lose the pin a small piece of wire will retain the arm since the pin/wire will be enclosed in the track, preventing it from coming out.
3) Once all of the plastic is off both cables use a heavy grease on them. I believe the previous owner of my 4Runner used some white lithium grease before and that was part of the problem. Based on my experiences with it and the positive experience of those on the forum I expect like most things, there are cheap and expensive options for lithium grease and you get what you pay for. I personally used a heavier gear grease figuring it would last longer (I've had that can for over 20 years in the Houston heat/humidity and it's still as "greasy" as the day we bought it).
