The sunroof is stuck open and makes a ratcheting sound when trying to close. Resetting fails. The car has 27000 miles on it, and now out of warranty. The mechanism seems like a crappy design, as it has failed twice now, but this time the roof is canted slightly.
If it is JUST out of warranty… It must have been fixed under warranty, right? I’d suggest taking it back to the dealer and pointing out their fix did not work. The gears should not strip… that would lead me to believe you have a bind somewhere in the sunroof system that was not fixed the last time. That might get it repaired again for free. If you still must pay for the repair, I’d suggest getting it fixed and never using the sunroof again.
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I had a seat back that did that but could get it to work if I assisted it. If you can coax it closed again pull the fuse and never use it again. Replacing the mechanism can be very expensive.
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My VW Rabbit had a sunroof, manually operated, turned a crank. It would at times become very hard to turn the crank, always caused by debris jamming the slide channels. Could be leaves/twigs, but often it was bunched up roof-liner fabric. I guess one advantage of a hand crank sunroof, you can always just put more force into your cranking effort to get it to move. Electric motors have a max force limit, and if the mechanism is sticking at some point the electric motor won’t be able to move it. In OP’s case, maybe get a helper to pull on the sunroof while OP operates the button. Seems like the person doing the pulling might find themselves in awkward position, hard to exert much force. In that case, maybe stand behind car & pull on a rope with something tied to one end that will grab the edge of the sunroof.
Note that just b/c you hear a clicking noise, doesn’t necessarily imply any gears are stripped. Could a designed-in clutch mechanism is ratcheting , like it is supposed to when the sunroof sticks. Similar to the sound you may have heard when you’ve used an electric driver-drill and the screw has reached the torque setting.
Clicking sounds can be totally unrelated to the gears too. CD players sometimes will make a clicking sound, acting like they can’t play the disc, and you think the mechanism that movesthe head to and fro has stripped gears. That clicking noise is usually the CD player trying to figure out how far away the lens needs to be from the disc surface.
Have you tried closing it manually? The instructions are in your manual.