Window mechanism cables
Discussion
Well my driver's side electric window ground to a halt the other day and dropped half way down. I'm told, and I also believe that one or both of the cables have snapped. I have just ordered the replacement cables from Autolink, but my question is..
How much of a b
d of a job is it? How much swearing should my neighbours be prepared for? Are my hands going to need a skin graft?
Any tips which will go towards neutralising the above are much appreciated!
It's held up with duck tape at the moment
How much of a b
d of a job is it? How much swearing should my neighbours be prepared for? Are my hands going to need a skin graft?Any tips which will go towards neutralising the above are much appreciated!
It's held up with duck tape at the moment
In case anyone is bored, I posted this on another forum and figured someone here might be interested too!
~~
I may have mentioned that just before Christmas my driver's side electric window stopped working - didn't go up or down, and the glass would drop to about half way down. I pretty much knew straight away that it would be one or both of the two cables inside, part of the regulator, that have snapped.
So I bought two new cables (about £40) and they arrived just after Christmas.
It's now April and this morning I finally built up the required amount of "arsed" to fix it
So I thought I'd shove it in this thread in case anyone cares, or needs to do the same job themselves!
First things first, the door must come apart
So speaker grille, door handle and door opener surround removed
Door card removed
Now you have to remove the dust/water guard plastic sheet, which is held on with nasty horrible black mastic that sticks to anything, and will come off nothing
With that lot removed, you have to remove the glass - no pictures of this step because I was too busy getting annoyed at the process, hehe, but you need to remove the trim on the top, outer part of the door, which is held on with some stubborn clips which must NOT be broken. Ask me if you want any more info on this
Nice dirty pane of glass
Now the motor and regulator were removed, which was a case of marking up the position of a couple of nuts (their positions were adjustable) with Tippex, and undoing all of the nuts that hold these two items to the door. Out comes the mechanism, and...
Yep. There's your problem.
Cables had gotten all mangled up in the motor capstan
And an overview of the mechanism when removed, showing the bit that snapped, causing the grief...
...which is shown here - the tip of that wire should have a little stub which hooks in to a plastic holder on the window runner...
...which is circled here (you can see where/how the intact cable is held in, and the little broken tip is still stuck in on the other side):
It also caused the wire to jump off of one of the pulleys, further adding to the mess and tangle
So with the old cables removed and discarded, I set about attaching the new ones, which is a bit fiddly..
You need to grease up the capstan, then wind the upper cable around the bottom hook in it (underside of it, not visible) approx. 2.5 turns, then wind the lower cable on to the top of it (visible below) approx 2.5 turns, grease up the cables thoroughly, then re-seat it on the motor's axle and make the sure the cables are sitting in the threaded runners on the capstan so as not to tangle it again
Now you can thread the cable onto the greased-up pulleys and into the plastic lug on the runner that holds the cable - not as easy as it first looks, there's not enough slack at first without fully tightening the two plastic "seats" shown in the photo above and compressing the spring and white plastic lug, to reveal as much of the cable from the sleeve as possible
Once you've done this, it should wind round nicely. Now pop the metal cover back on to cover up the capstan, and this completes the re-assembly of the motor and regulator mechanism, which should now look like this:
Now to get the bugger back into the door. Which wasn't too tricky tbh.
Shoving it all back in:
Regulator bolted up
Motor bolted up
And.. All done! Motor tightened up, regulator aligned and tightened up, window stoppers replaced, glass cleaned (Autoglym Intensive Tar Remover for the win) and replaced, and it goes up and down! wooo
Door re-assembled
So there you have it. I was initially viewing this job with great trepidation, but after some initial snags, it wasn't too tricky! I feel I could re-do it in half the time. Which is handly, because my neighbour's MX-5 has got exactly the same problem, and guess who's going to be helping fix it!
~~
I may have mentioned that just before Christmas my driver's side electric window stopped working - didn't go up or down, and the glass would drop to about half way down. I pretty much knew straight away that it would be one or both of the two cables inside, part of the regulator, that have snapped.
So I bought two new cables (about £40) and they arrived just after Christmas.
It's now April and this morning I finally built up the required amount of "arsed" to fix it
So I thought I'd shove it in this thread in case anyone cares, or needs to do the same job themselves!First things first, the door must come apart
So speaker grille, door handle and door opener surround removed
Door card removed
Now you have to remove the dust/water guard plastic sheet, which is held on with nasty horrible black mastic that sticks to anything, and will come off nothing
With that lot removed, you have to remove the glass - no pictures of this step because I was too busy getting annoyed at the process, hehe, but you need to remove the trim on the top, outer part of the door, which is held on with some stubborn clips which must NOT be broken. Ask me if you want any more info on this
Nice dirty pane of glass
Now the motor and regulator were removed, which was a case of marking up the position of a couple of nuts (their positions were adjustable) with Tippex, and undoing all of the nuts that hold these two items to the door. Out comes the mechanism, and...
Yep. There's your problem.
Cables had gotten all mangled up in the motor capstan
And an overview of the mechanism when removed, showing the bit that snapped, causing the grief...
...which is shown here - the tip of that wire should have a little stub which hooks in to a plastic holder on the window runner...
...which is circled here (you can see where/how the intact cable is held in, and the little broken tip is still stuck in on the other side):
It also caused the wire to jump off of one of the pulleys, further adding to the mess and tangle
So with the old cables removed and discarded, I set about attaching the new ones, which is a bit fiddly..
You need to grease up the capstan, then wind the upper cable around the bottom hook in it (underside of it, not visible) approx. 2.5 turns, then wind the lower cable on to the top of it (visible below) approx 2.5 turns, grease up the cables thoroughly, then re-seat it on the motor's axle and make the sure the cables are sitting in the threaded runners on the capstan so as not to tangle it again
Now you can thread the cable onto the greased-up pulleys and into the plastic lug on the runner that holds the cable - not as easy as it first looks, there's not enough slack at first without fully tightening the two plastic "seats" shown in the photo above and compressing the spring and white plastic lug, to reveal as much of the cable from the sleeve as possible
Once you've done this, it should wind round nicely. Now pop the metal cover back on to cover up the capstan, and this completes the re-assembly of the motor and regulator mechanism, which should now look like this:
Now to get the bugger back into the door. Which wasn't too tricky tbh.
Shoving it all back in:
Regulator bolted up
Motor bolted up
And.. All done! Motor tightened up, regulator aligned and tightened up, window stoppers replaced, glass cleaned (Autoglym Intensive Tar Remover for the win) and replaced, and it goes up and down! wooo
Door re-assembled
So there you have it. I was initially viewing this job with great trepidation, but after some initial snags, it wasn't too tricky! I feel I could re-do it in half the time. Which is handly, because my neighbour's MX-5 has got exactly the same problem, and guess who's going to be helping fix it!
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