Door window fails to operate correctly. Diagnosis & Repair

[Faraday]

Wayne, how long are you in the UK for and whereabouts are you. You are welcome to my old window mechanism if it helps you in any way, but have agreed to show it to Enright for now to compare against the peugeot one he has, so would not be available for another week.

[Polymathic]

Can someone please tell me how to get the new slider on the rail? Do I just pop it in? Thanks.

[Faraday]

Hi and welcome to the LEC forum.
If you mean the centre rail, yes, it slides in from one end only but you do have to have the whole assembly out of the door first, don't think it can be done whilst still in the door.
It does feel tight when you put it on but I used a bit of Vaseline (with aloe vera! "borrowed from my wife") which made it easier to move, however as the mechanism was screwed up I had to buy a new one. Works fine now.

[Polymathic]

Thanks for the help, but when you say it slides in from one end only, do you mean it slides in from on send of the rail, it that you have to pop the slider anywhere in the rail? Each end of the rail seems to have a
tab that won't let me slide in the slider.

[Faraday]

Hi, have you seen the very first post on this thread by Specky? There are loads of really good photographs which if you scroll through you will see the assembly propped up against a door. The slider should slide onto one end of the rail, (one end has a piece of metal bent over so it will need to be the other end). There is no way you can pop it into the rail, as far as I know as it has to slide in from one end and when operating is under quite a bit of stress, therefore it would pop out again, if that makes sense. Mine is, however a UK SE Turbo, 1992, whether it is different for US models, I do not know, try sending a message to Brit Car Nut (John) he knows all about UK and US models. Hope that helps.

[Polymathic]

Thanks for all the input. There is a tab that prevents easy sliding on both sides of my rail. Eventually, lubricated the slider, and using a rubber mallet tapped it past the smaller of the two tabs and got it on! It wasn't easy, and I feared I'd break it.

[Faraday]

Glad you got it sorted, now you have the fun part getting it back inside the door Good luck

[Polymathic]

Before getting it back in the door, I need to get then cable back on there... and it looks impossible!

[Faraday]

It looked impossible to me too, and I tried many times but it just did not seem long enough. If you go through the threads on this post, there is a bit on how to do it, but various experts on here were very helpful and called me to explain that it only needs a bit of force. My problem was that all of the cable was chewed up inside the motor bit, but so long as you only need to stretch it about half an inch it should be ok. Not an easy fix but well worthwhile when your window works again. Good luck

[Fredjohn]

The trick is to use 4 hands and a foot to hold it all! Seriously though, put the cable over all the pulleys except one. Then compress the springs at each end: this shortens the distance the cable has to go, effectively making the cable longer. You should then be able to ease the cable over the final pulley. But it will still need a bit of levering, pulling and heaving to do this.

[Rusty Wishbone]

My window goes down until the back of the butterfly hits the top of the reinforcing cross member in the door. It looks like the slider has come out of the runner and is damaged. I shall order some new sliders & butterflies tomorrow, and hopefully I will be able to replace them over the weekend.

[Fredjohn]

My window goes down until the back of the butterfly hits the top of the reinforcing cross member in the door. It looks like the slider has come out of the runner and is damaged. I shall order some new sliders & butterflies tomorrow, and hopefully I will be able to replace them over the weekend.

Have fun Howard!!! Use the 2 videos on the opening page of this thread: they are very useful.

[Rusty Wishbone]

New slider installed, and this guide really helped. My driver's window goes up and down nicely now.

[Megwenda]

Both door sliders and butterflies replaced, and thanks to the very valuable info in this thread, it was a piece of cake!

Actually, only one was broken, but as I had both door panels off to do the speakers, I decided to replace them both... just as well, as the other was well worn... probably would have broken soon in any case, so now that job is done for the next 20 years (I hope

Adjusted the front window runner so that the front part lines up with the A pillar seal (seeing as that is fixed, and the window needs to seal against it) and then adjusted the middle so that the butterfly etc just clears the reinforcing panel. after that, I adjusted the back by leaving it loose, and running the window up and down a few times so that it found its own correct place.

Thanks for all the input. There is a tab that prevents easy sliding on both sides of my rail. Eventually, lubricated the slider, and using a rubber mallet tapped it past the smaller of the two tabs and got it on! It wasn't easy, and I feared I'd break it.

All I did was use a pair of pliers to bend the tab down, slid the slider passed it, and then bent it straight up again.... provided it is not bent too often, should cause no problems

Next step is to mount the speakers, and then I can get the doors closed up

[Lotus54]

Thanks for the good info.
I think I'll add a diagram of wiring and relays.

Found out the issue with mine was the 'down' relay.
Since it appears the systems uses the NC pin for an earth of the 'other' relay.
So mine would'nt go up or down- or just occasionally.

Wiggling the down relay made both work.
Looks lime I'll have to get into the 'lotus positon' some more and fix the connectors.
Dang.

Mark

BTW, does that relay panel drop down or anything?
Darn Federal model has a kick pad that is a bear to remove.

[dapinky]

I decided that this was probably the best thread to add this post, but it could have gone into many others.....

Whilst re-building the doors I thought I'd better strip and clean the window winder bits.

Everything was going well, until I cleaned up all the old grease in the chanels and slider blocks - a previous owner and/or mechanic has been bodging things and it needed a bit of fettling.... there were all sorts of greases mixed in, 'standard' grease, copperslip, and oily gunk.

... the main bits were okay (all the bits in the doors), but the glass fittings had seen better days.

Due to the gusty winds a few weeks back, the passenger glass was smashed whilst in storage, so I got another one from Apollo. That one had some of the slider blocks fitted, and some missing - not a worry as I had retrieved the old ones from the pile of broken glass - so I ended up with all the parts I needed, and some 'spares'.

The drivers window on mine had been 'modified' by removing the plastic shouldered washers which go behind the glass and abutt to the come shaped spacers which in turn attach to the slider blocks - they were fitted with a longer M4 bolt (from the slider, through the cone, through the glass and attached to a penny washer and nut) - they had been working fine, but I didn't like the idea of a solidly mounted item which may cause future glass breakage problems, and grabbed the ones from my 'spares pile'.

Easily fitted and job jone.

However, when it came to put it all together, I didn't have enough of the 'rollers' which go in the slider blocks (I had only retrieved 6, out of the eight required) - and one was extremely worn (to the point of being a "U" shape, not an "O" shape), whilst the others were deformed.

roller.png

At this point, I decided that it would benefit from a new set, but when I looked at the usual suspects websites, I was horrified that they were £2.59 each (+P&P and VAT), so a set of 8 was going to cost me just shy of £30 delivered.

Having decided that a few bits of plastic wern't worth that much, i looked into what material they are made from, and decided that it was some form of semi-rigid tubing, with a diamneter of 8mm.

A check of t'internet gave me lots of options, and I started off looking at Nylon, Delrin and others, before setling on a length of 8mm diameter PTFE rod. This was chosen as it is extremely hard wearing, slippery and easily machined.

It arrived this morning, so I cut a length off with a stanley knife (really easy to cut), fitted it in a spare slider block, and found that it was too wide a diameter to go into the window chanel (being a rod, not a tube, it didn't compress).

Not having access to a simple lathe, I improvised by setting a drill into a bench stand (read 'Vice' ), cutting a 4" length of rod and mounting it in the chuck. A 'tool rest' was made from a bit of spare 2" x 2" timber, screwed to the bench about 20mm below the material, and it took about 20 seconds with a standard wood chisel to turn the rod down to a smaller size.

Trial and error decided that the size required is 7.2mm, and i ended up with a lot of undersized ones until i found a size which I'm happy with, and then made 9 others the same.

rollers.jpg

The pic shows a length of 8mm rod (which is actually nearer to 8.5mm) the new solid rollers, and some of the old knackered ones.

I bought 2 x 300mm lengths of rod from ebay for £4.40... ordered it yesterday afternoon, arrived this morning - can't get better than that!

Only actually needed one (even with the trial and error bits!) - but it'll come in handy for something, no doubt.

So, for £2 I have all new rollers in my windows, fitted with the proper silicone grease this time - Progress at last

[GeoffSmith]

Trial and error decided that the size required is 7.2mm...

Wonder if you can ninethirtytooths from the US.

[lotusflasherman]

before setling on a length of 8mm diameter PTFE rod. This was chosen as it is extremely hard wearing, slippery and easily machined.

Good choice Dave.

We used PTFE rod drilled and machined to replace the rubber bushes in the front suspension (inboard lower link and front tie rod bushes) of our two race minis in the early 70's . The other driver worked at ICI Plastics at Welwyn Garden City and just picked up bits of rod out of the scrap bin. With the sticky Dunlop slicks the rubber bushes used to cause judder under severe braking, the norm when racing, as they 'wound up and let go' but PTFE was superb, just as good as Rose Joints and FREE!
(We did try to paint them black to disguise our 'demon tweak' but couldn't get paint to stick )

In theory PTFE is subject to creep so we made a few extra so we had spares if needed but I'm pretty sure we never changed them. PTFE seemed able to handle suspension loads so your window rollers should work a treat...

Now what about PTFE replacements for the metalastic bushes on the Elan?

Phil

[HJ2]

I still worry a little about PFTE creep, but like the way you solved it!

[dapinky]

Well, they both go up and down without sticking or making any funny noises - so it appears to work for now..... (and if they need replacing, then it's cheap and easy to do).

They don't get much temperature/wear so I don't think there will be a problem.

I think that the reason they needed replacing is that the previous "mechanic" fitted them vertically not horizontally, so they were more of a slider than a roller