Power windows fixed

Know How

We switched over to the old pickup truck because this summer was a hot one! My power windows have been quitting on us one by one. We fixed the power windows today and had a good time together. The only money we spent was on the magnetic tool we needed to fish out the bolt I dropped into the door. Ugh. Having been a repairman for 25 years, I can say with authority that the skill of seeing how things work can set you apart from the modern swaptronics person. Of course swaptronics is the practice of replacing related parts until success is achieved. This can get pricey.

The process

We removed the inside door carpets and then the inner plastic to show us where the motors were. After that I was supposed to be able to drill some dimples out to expose the bolts that held the motors in place. FAILURE! Not sure if I used the wrong bit, or just pushed it too hard, but, SNAP! The drill bit broke and I had about 5 more holes to make. This was only a temporary set back. I switched to the Rotary tool and cutting wheels. I did go through several cutting discs, but, those are really cheap and it made short work of it. Next, we found the right size sockets and removed the bolts. After dropping the first one into the door, I got wise and wrapped some wire around the rest of them as I took them out to prevent further drops.

Rebuilding the motors

Once we got the motors out, we had to pull off the cover plate. Once that was removed, we saw why the windows don’t work. The motors were filled with all kinds of broken bits. These were the remnants of the old nylon spacers that fit in between the spindle and the gears so the motor could move the windows. Many years ago, I worked in a test lab for just such a motor, so, I knew some tricks. All we needed were some items similar in size that were round-ish that could hold up to the pressure. No big deal. After searching in my bins, I found 6 nuts that would do nicely. Cleaning the debris out was simple enough. Then, we removed the little snap rings and this allowed for the spindle to be raised up enough to insert the nuts into the spaces. 3 per motor. I think even 1 per motor would have been okay, but hey, they were free and why not just add them all in.

Reassembly

Once we put everything back together, it was now a matter of reassembling the whole thing. I tried to take the easy road and simply replace the bolt I dropped, but no dice there. None of the local hardware stores could figure out what the size was. A visit to the big box commercial fastener store, they were able to determine the size, but, they would not sell me less than 100 bolts and then refused to take my cash. TERRIBLE! No wonder they are closing stores permanently. Anyway, I bought a magnetic goose neck tool to retrieve the lost bolt and was able to get everything working again without having to buy new motors.