98 soft top problem

I've had my '98 900 S 'vert for about two years now. It's not my daily driver. When I bought it, it had a minor problem with the soft top opening/closing, specifically the tonneau cover had to be lifted manually during opening/closing.

Since then, the general operation of the top has deteriorated badly. The motors have become less responsive, initially "stalling" during operation, where I had to release the switch and press it again to get it to continue whatever it was doing.

Now it's gotten to the point where I can only put the top down manually, and it will get about 90% of the way closed when putting it up, with the stalling/hitching issues mentioned previously. When up, the 5th bow does not lock.

At first, I thought it seemed like a hydraulic fluid leak. However, from all I can tell, the '98 and earlier models don't use any hydraulics, it's all electric motors. They started using hydraulics in '99 with the 9-3, or at least that's how I'm interpreting what I've read.

Any suggestions are greatly appreciated - even if it's just some information to arm my relatively inexperienced and uneducated self with when I take her to the mechanic.

Thanks in advance!