After having my top working for a few weeks after I replaced the wiring once again the top started to act upon opening and closing. It began by opening and then stopping halfway and the same with the closing both giving the A696 and sometime A692 error codes. It seems even though I replaced the wires for both sides up to where the top of the arm is going into the trunk for both the microswitches its now failing again. The final draw was when the top was open and then because of the A696 microswitch left error the sequence to close would not work at all. And thus the roof was stuck in the open position. Luckily the Trunk would still allow me to open it. From this opening the trunk on the left you can just barely gain access to the B pillar wires on the left side. I had to remove the screws holding the separator lid to give me enough wiggle room to get my hands in there to wiggle the wires around. After a few tugs the Microswitch 2 error cleared and i was able to start the sequence to get the roof into service mode. From there I began troubleshooting my wiring. As it turns out the degradation of the microswitch wire goes much further than just the top of the arm going into the trunk. I had to start from inside the trunk where the wire goes deep into the trunk where there is a big bundle of wiring on both the left and right side.
On the left side if you look at the very base of the arm that goes into the floorboard of the trunk there is a bundle of wires covered with cloth. you'll need to cut this open. in there will be a Brown and Light brown wire. For testing I cut it right there and wired in a new microswitch I purposed and this cleared the Microswitch Left error:
Here is the left looking down when the top is in the service position:
The roof could now move back and forth with no issue. So i rerouted the wire all the way from the roof into the trunk.
When the wiring for the left switch sensor is bad the roof doesn't move at all or stops in different phases it takes time to unravel all the wiring to wiggle each part to get the roof moving. I had the same problem with the microswitch on the right side, so once again from inside the trunk I cut the bundle and found the Brown / Green Brown wires and cut them.I put in my purchased microswitch as a bypass to get the roof to clear the error and start its movement again. Also if the right side microswitch wiring is bad you cannot close windows nor open your trunk. Here is pic of the right side where I spliced inside the trunk:
This is my test microswitch I use from inside the trunk to bypass all the wiring.
Once I get some time I want to dig under all the trunk flooring to find where both side of the micrswitch wires originate and then I will replace with a new flexible wire as the BMW one looks horrible, it cracks upon touching it.