window broke, need fix

[achampagne]

Ok, so another thread about my disco. Today my wife put the window up and something popped and fell inside of the door, and the window fell slowly down. So I pulled it apart and found a piece of metal in a half moon shape with teeth on one side that looks as if it was spot welded to an arm inside the door. Has anyone had this problem? I am thinking I can drill out the old spot welds and re-weld to the arm. Any suggestions? In the mean time I have zipped tied the window in the up position so I am waterproofed against a the upcoming rain. I have all day tomorrow to work on this, before the weather turns to crap for a few days.

 

[AxeAngel]

Window regulator. Easy fix. Check out roverparts.com they are running a sale at the moment.

 

[JEFFSGTP]

I say go for it if you have the welding know how to do it...cheap fix and will probably outlive the rest of the truck if you weld it up real good...while your at it there is a bump stop area that stops the window at the right place when it goes down that wears out...weld a nut or something on where that bump stop is as when it wears down it will let the window go all the way down again...that is what happened on Chris' truck and we welded a nut there and is good as (probably better than) new.

 

[achampagne]

Thanks guys, I am going with the welding root today.

EDIT: I drilled out the toothed arm and spot welded then welded along the edge and it keeps breaking. Works great for 20-30 roll up/downs and then pop, broke again.

 

[JEFFSGTP]

hmm...sounds like something is out of whack...have you tried tack welding it and watching it in action to see what may be causing the undo stress on it?

 

[achampagne]

hmm...sounds like something is out of whack...have you tried tack welding it and watching it in action to see what may be causing the undo stress on it?

Yep, I sure have. it seems to be a lot load place on that point. I am now ot of town for a week so I won't be getting to it until next weekend. But I am going to redrill and reweld it. I am also thinking of doing two taps with a flush mount bolt. The geared side goes through a small giude of sorts and if things are not flush it will stick and cause failure, so I am not sure if I will tap it or not. One thing I am thinking is I need to let the weld cool longer before trying it again, that maybe the metal is still to soft when I test it. As of right now I have it all torn apart and the window zip tied up for while I am gone, so its at least weather proof.

spot welds drilled out

matched up to old welds

tack welded in place

After this it needs to be ground down, I used my dremel as it fit perfectly.
Now after this I did try it and it worked great with the exception it did not go down all the way, so I re-did the whole thing and that's when the failure happened.

 

[Errant]

How are the nylon guides? That's typically the failure point.

 

[achampagne]

They seem to be in good shape

 

[JEFFSGTP]

what I meant to say, was when you can see the stress being put on it, can you see anything else flexing etc that would be putting the stress on it?

might help to take the door panel on the other side off and watch all aspects of its mechanism in operation closely to see if something is amiss.

 

[achampagne]

Well the whole inner panel its attached to flexs when the window is all the way up or down, I think my main problem was not having the welds ground quite smooth enough, causing undo stress.

 

[JEFFSGTP]

Ahh, I see...well hopefully the next attempt solves the problem...Good Luck

 

[achampagne]

OK drilled the holes a little larger, grinded everything smooth as new and voila, fixed and working perfectly.

 

[JEFFSGTP]

Nice:victory:

 

[achampagne]

Nice:victory:

Little victory's is what its all about.

edit:

Make sure to re-lube anything on the regulatore that was greased before operating the window again, I just stripped the gear out of the motor and gave in , went to the pick and pull and grabbed a new regulator for $30.