Finally Repaired Rear Window Hanging Up.....

[Joe In Montana]

I got sick and tired of needing two people to open and close the tailgate window - one to push the button on the dash and someone to 'help' the window glass up and down.

Finally last week it got ridiculous and I couldn't get it past whatever it was that was hanging it up - but THIS time I as gonna fix it for sure!

In the past I had the drive cable break out of either end of the motor or the gearbox, and then it was buy-another-cable time. I cured that problem a long time ago, and I'll show you what I did to make that Bowden Cable bullet-proof, but first the pictures of the problem as I saw it whilst standing on my head........

OOPS ---> I guess the rules say NO PICTURES IF I'M NOT A MEMBER WHO PAID.
Too bad - this fixed it for real.

Well --- desperation set in 'cause I had my chainsaws in the back, gas, bar oil and premix with my wedges, mauls and a few axes. I needed them for a tree I had to drop today. .... NOW!

I crawled over the saws, oil, gas cans and junk and took all the screws out of the steel cover panel - just like old times - this time on my back, on the rear floor.

Anyway - make it short - I found what (surprisingly simply!) was being hit by the lower rail that's glued onto the bottom of the glass, and couldn't finally get past it no-way!

 

[Justin V]

Says premium member by your name

 

[Justin V]

And nice work

 

[frankin5]

Not what the rules say. It says you have to have 5 post to post pictures as a non member.
you are past the five posts and you are a premium member. So where are the pictures and the
fix.

 

[Joe In Montana]

Hmmm.... OK - I don't know what happened here but I'll continue with the repair information.




What I found was that the motor itself was the culprit.


Here's the small lug that hits the lower track........

-----> that's where the glass is glued into the trough that raises and lowers the glass.​

This is looking at the back side (above ^) - or the rearward side of the motor. (Closest to the tail lights)



So the way it gets to hit the track is because the motor has somehow moved and I found mine was tilted into the area where the window has to travel - or so I thought.

I figured it was a bent and smashed in rear deck on the inside of the tailgate where I'd deformed it into the mechanism for the window regulator - but that wasn't the full story.

It was part of the problem - but my window got worse and worse until I only got 3 inches down and back up again. .

It turned out that one of the small screws that holds the motor to a bracket was missing - broken off really. that is part of the 2-bolt mount.




You have to look inside the open area where you can access the motor and gearbox ---- after you remove the inside cover on the tailgate.

NOTE TO SELF: stop dropping chainsaws, motors. bricks, bags of concrete and gravel on the tailgate. ​

SOME limited amount of bending/crushing of the deck or panel is OK - but after a while you'll get a collision with moving parts that at first, just snags the window a little bit when it goes UP and DOWN.

It WILL get worse.

​

Here below, you can see where the screw broke off - flush, darned it!

I didn't want to drill INTO a hermetically sealed motor with permanent magnets waiting to grab hold of metal chips when they got inside the motor itself.

I needed a different repair approach ------ something more long-living and with a broken bolt IN the motor, I decided to just grind it down gently --- even with the motor housing.




I then drilled out the hole in the bracket to make it a lot larger to allow me to make a wire-spot weld directly to the motor housing.

I'm not worried about demagnetizing the magnets - they are inside a full metal shell and there'd be no way magnetic 'flux' or 'neutrino-waves' would be a problem.




OK - I somehow LOST the last picture - but suffice it to say that the repair went well and the patient survived.

I had put the existing, unbroken bolt back into the correct hole of the bracket to help align everything before I did the welding.

When I was welding the motor to the bracket, I kept a 1 gallon bottle of water to quench the weld every few moments to keep the heat to a minimum.


NOW - here's a sidebar for you guys:

• Look at the end of the motor where it goes to the blue Bowden Cable for the drive.
  
• Notice the hose clamp and the extra heavy plastic tubing I put on it?
  
• That little trick - with a decent amount of Gorilla Urethane Glue is the answer to keep those cable ends from popping out of the adapter and ruining the cable drive.
• The drive cable is really very strong - it only unwraps itself when one of the ends comes partially out at one end or the other when it's under power.
  
• I did trick that to both ends - slipping a plastic sleeve over the cable and pushing it up to the adapter where it screwed to the gearbox and/or motor.
  
• I have not had a cable failure in all the time since I made this repair. That has been 8 years now, and I hope to never buy another drive cable ever again.

I hope this helps someone in their quest of a working rear tailgate window.

It's frustrating I know - and I lived with my problem for a few years now - until today!!!!!​

 

[frankin5]

Nice write up, thanks for the in site.

 

[rampage]

I didn't want to drill INTO a hermetically sealed motor with permanent magnets waiting to grab hold of metal chips when they got inside the motor itself.

Just an FYI: the motor is not hermetically sealed - there are 4 long bolts with nuts that run from end to end. Just unscrew them and the motor comes apart. And the gate motor doesn’t have any permanent magnets inside - it uses a field coil instead.

 

[Joe In Montana]

Just an FYI: the motor is not hermetically sealed - there are 4 long bolts with nuts that run from end to end. Just unscrew them and the motor comes apart. And the gate motor doesn’t have any permanent magnets inside - it uses a field coil instead.

I never tried to open it - never thought it was open-able.

 

[diesel4me]

Heat is what will kill those magnets more than anything--or being dropped and shattered...lots of small winches with permanent magnet motors and lawn tractor starters suffer from the magnets shattering when the motor case gets whacked,by the cable & hook,or the operator ,when he gets the hammer out to tap on the motor in hopes of making it work awhile longer..

 

[Joe In Montana]

In this situation, these rear window motors live in hidden hostility.

Sun baked, water and freezing snow, sand, dirt - mud in some situations - and long wire runs creating low voltage and high current demands which makes life tough for them.

I'm surprised that they work at all.

 

[Joe In Montana]

I finally found the final picture with the spot-welded repair.



I know this is kinda drastic, but I found that a new motor - although somewhat spendy - is still available, even from (of all places!) Chevrolet/GMC/BUICK.

Why Buick - I dunnow. But I bet that in MY lifetime I'll never have to deal with this again - and so I opted for a rather down-n-dirty repair that just works very well.

I know for a fact that any high welding temperature I momentarily created was nowhere near the abuse the motor was taking with the window hitting the motor itself and jerking the drive cable and motor/gearset/arms.

Here's the Reman'd A1-Cardone listing at Auto-Zone

To get a rebuilt unit here in Montana would require hitching up the mule and going to Missoula (60 miles away) and placing an order at the Pony Express Office to get one sent here. I don't/didn't have the time nor the inclination to stand in the freak (not really) snowstorm that is hitting us in April - more on that later if one were to ask.

Welding is so - so-o-o quick and forever if one does it correctly. Besides - I'm a farmer-in-training and if I cannot use haywire, duct tape or just weld it - then it don't get fixed.

I gave up the Cowboy Credo(*), and have now adopted The Farmer's Credo(**).

(*) - Ride a horse, rescue a damsel in distress from time to time and carry a Glock 10mm.

(**) - Plow with the horse, go trout fishing when it's not snowing - and carry a Glock 10mm.