A tale of two windows
As an Integrale owner, you'll know life is full of surprises, and not all good ones.
Last week I had windows stick on two different Evos, in the same afternoon!
This is the first malfunction.
A lovely Evo2 with a stuck window, the motor runs but the window won't move.
Time to get in there and see what's up.
Undo the armrest, door handle, plastic box and top right corner screws. Undo the door lock handle and remove, there's a screw behind it which is easy to miss, these are all cross-head screws so are easy to undo.
Ease the door card card away from
the door with a flat screwdriver, the clips will pull out, then lift up slightly to clear the top trim. Lift the top inside trim off.
Undo the window carriage from the slider, 2 x 10mm bolts. Then carefully lift
the window glass out of the door frame. Use two hands! I was taking a photo!
More 10mm bolts, with nuts on the motor.
Remove them all and the assembly will be loose,
undo the 2 wiring connectors and label them so you can put them back correctly.
The motor and cable assembly are a tight fit in the door frame, but with careful wiggling it can be drawn out of the door bottom.
On the bench, the motor was removed.
The cog wheel, in the centre of the metal plate, is driven by the motor. This cog wheel was slipping on the spiral drive cable, but only at one point.
So I thought I could remove the cable and turn it around so a new section would be on the drive wheel. I drew the spiral cable out of its tube.
This couldn't be done, the window end of the cable is crimped on. I then thought if the motor was moved over a bit it would press the drive cog into the cable a bit better, that didn't work either. The cog still slipped.
No remedy was found, so I'll have to stump up for a new assembly, that means a call to Tanc!
I'll update when the part arrives.
Trying again!
On his white album, Frank Zappa told the story of a chance meeting at Chicago O'Hare airport with
Don Preston, of the travelling rock and roll band Vanilla Fudge. This meeting led to a night of fun with Frank's and Vanilla Fudge's groupies in the O'Hare airport Hilton.
My meeting over a beer with Cyril G, of Quebec, Canada, led me to accept Cyril's advice and be more brave with my window winders.
After our hols, returning to England I set about doing thewindow job as Cyril suggested, that is turning the window winding cable around, here's how this was succesfully done.
I took the door panel off the car as before, and removed the motor and cable.
On the bench I removed the drive motor,
then drilled out the rivets on the lower window stop bracket. When this is removed the window slider can be pulled down and off its rail, and the cable can be pulled out.
The cable was worn and rusty around the driven area, and was difficult to remove, it was quite stiff in its channel.
This is the lower end of the cable, the plate is spot welded to the the window slider. I drilled out the welds, cut the cable end knob off, then screwed the plate off the cable
I pushed the greased spiral cable back up its tube, and when the plate was in the right place I replaced the window lifter on its rails, then drilled through the lifter and end plate and window support, I screwed in 4 self tappers as shown.
Then I put it all in the vice and carefullly hacksawed the extending thread off the back of the screws.
The last operation, shown below, was to drill the lower bump stop, and pop rivet that to the rail. The rivets have to be flat enough for the window support to travel over them. Fit the top rivet first, so when the lower one goes over it, the top rivet is flatter, the window carriage clears the top rivet first.
The drive motor has a little movement in the fixing holes, so I pushed it in the cable direction, then tigtened it up. I used hex head 10mm bolts instead of the original machine screws, to get it good and tight
As advised by Cyril, I wirebrushed the spiral cable, this cleaned it up a bit, it's got to be
pushed back up its pipe, so needs to be clean. I then cut the other end knob off the cable, and screwed the plate back on to that end. I also removed the plastic guide pipe for the excess used cable from the motor end, so I could pull the cable and not just push it.
With the cable greased and refitted, I bolted back the drive motor, then pushed back the black plastic cable tube under the motor. I refitted the unit in the car door, put the glass back, and adjusted the window alignment.
I re-connected the wires, clipped over the joint covers then tested the fix.
It worked well, so I refitted the door trim, then wiped all my greasy fingermarks marks off the glass. Time for tea!
This is the modern electric window winder replacement,
it's not the same as the original
Now I'm sure Cyril or me are not the first to do this operation, but it's most satisfying to get the item on the bench and properly repair it. A slipping cable on 20 year old windows is not uncommon, I've got another Delta that needs the same job doing, Cyril has one waiting too.
So this job is a little tricky, but quite easily done, and at no cost! The money can be saved for the next malfunction!
If you look at the pictures of Delta window winders at AECar or Tanc B, you'll see they are simpler, modern units. They may be a Fiat part, probably Chinese anyway. But here we have preserved an original Lancia fitting, and kept things original, I like that!