Gotta love a Lotus

[tweetdriver63]

Well, what started as a simple repair must have pissed off the car gods.

I was just replacing a broken door cheater panel (had fallen loose and gotten crushed in the closing door). I finished the swap and was pleased. Then I went to raise the window glass and all that happened was the sound of the lift motor and a little spreading of the door panels.

Turns out the car gods decide that was a great time to break the butterfly clip and let the window glass slip off of the lift mechanism. Dammit!

Now I'm stuck with a window that can't be closed, and since this is my daily driver, I can't really just take the door apart until I have the replacement parts in hand. Fortunately, the weather here is looking like no rain in the forecast for at least the next four days. Unfortunately, the next four days includes a Sunday and a Monday holiday, so I don't know if the parts will get here before the next rain.

Since the other window has also been acting up a little I have ordered two new center slider blocks and two new butterfly clips, oh yeah, and two new red/orange door lock clips. I'm hoping I can get by without replacing the other slider blocks. The ones on the broken window were just replaced about three years ago. Oddly, even though the other window parts had comparable prices to SJ Sportscars, the little slider blocks (four per side) cost over $30 each from Dave Bean! They are the equivalent of about $11 each from SJS. DBE is going to get the parts I ordered to me priority mail, and send them out today, so hopefully they get here quickly.

BTW, I also am psyched to be fixing my broken seat. The suspension unit (as Lotus calls it) that holds up the seat cushion broke about four years ago. I got a trimmer to repair it, but that only held for a few months, then it broke again. Since then, I've had a rolled up towel stuffed under my driver's seat to support it, and it's frakking uncomfortable as hell. I had thought the correct part was unavailable since it had never even been listed on the aftersales lists posted here in the past, but DBE had two of them in stock. A new one is now sitting in a box in my garage, waiting for me to install it, which is happening this weekend.

Next up will be replacing the rear wishbones due to some rust. I can order them from SJS, but if anybody knows a source for stainless steel ones, I'd be happy to hear from you.

[Peter_W]

With all the usual disclaimers when one is about to relate a temporary bodge that worked successfully for them, but maybe they just got lucky and it could cause additional grief for someone else that tries it…

I had the same situation as you (except that the weather was already rainy at the time), and by poking a dowel up through the drain holes in the bottom of the door, was able to push the window up enough to grab it from the top and pull up further. With the window part way up I could look down inside the door between the window and the fuzzy strip and see the bobbins at the window bottom. I looped a thick cord down into the door and was able to loop it under the bobbins, and then pulled the window all the way up and secured the cord around the inside door handle.

[epipete]

Chris, it should only take you about 20/30 minutes to remove the door card, after which you should be able to raise the glass by hand.

If it is just the butterfly clip that has snapped off then the window can be reset into the flange and carefully closed electronically and then wedged up with some sort of brace (for security reasons). Similarly, if the issue is complete failure of the butterfly then the glass can be raised by hand and similiarly braced.

I ran my car with the window fixed as in the 1st example for many weeks it raised and closed quite normally without the butterfly clip in place whilst ordering new!

Pete