Day 4 is history now. I finally got a chance to finish the window motor repair. But that was Tuesday afternoon following an early morning concrete placement on the jobsite. Over the weekend, I spent some money…
So I’m killing time in the airport on Friday and I start to make up a spreadsheet with the parts costs so far, as well as the projected parts costs to finish the repairs. I plug in everything I can think of including the tools I have and plan to purchase… then I look at the total… Ouch, over 7 grand… I was a little bummed out after that, because I had in my head $7000.00 as the resale amount… and then I had to tell my Wife. Not looking forward to that.
So I finally get back to Detroit and my Wife picks me up. We’re driving out of the airport when I break the news… I figure She can’t do anything too rash right now as I’m the one driving… but I brace for the impact… and… nothing, she’s cool with it… did I tell you all how much I love this woman? She anticipated I’d be putting more than the cost of the car into the car for repairs, so she was not upset at all, or surprised. Phew. She makes a joke about this moment being documented on my blog and we both have a laugh.
Saturday night I’m looking up parts and adding everything to my cart, I check a couple different websites, I compare prices and shipping. Some parts are cheaper one place, some cheaper at the other, but overall they are close, so I settle on one place to purchase everything. I place an order and hit the sack.
Sunday was church then travel back to Georgia. Monday was a late night at the jobsite, picked up the window motor on the way home, then an early morning for the concrete placement… which brings us back to Tuesday afternoon, Day 4. I don’t plan to work on the car today because I’m running on little sleep. I figure I’ll get to the house, have a bite to eat, shower and head for bed. Not so much. I finish my lunch and get a second wind, so I figure I’ll tear into the door again. It’ll be good, my roommate is not home so I get the whole garage to myself.
I crank up some tunes and get to work. I left the door panel off and only reattached the inner panel with a couple screws, so it came back apart easily. Now the hard part, to get the window and the regulator out. I try to get the window glass out, but there is one stop that is bolted through the glass that will not allow me to slide the glass out. Not cool. I’m stumped. I cannot seem to figure a way to get the regulator out without taking the glass out first. Then I see there may be enough room if I can lower the regulator as if I were lowering the window. I had the motor housing off last week when I tried to clean everything and make it work so I fingered it’d be simple enough to pull it off again and spin the motor internals to lower the window. It does the trick and I’m able to get the regulator out without too much hassle. I swap out the motor, using the dremel to cut off the rivets to remove the old unit first. I grease the regulator and put it back in the door. I reattach the glass and loosely bolt it in the door. I then plug in the motor and give it a try. It works great. I bolt everything back together per the marks I made before disassembly… oh yeah, forgot to mention that… These windows must be realigned if they are removed from the regulator, so I made a few witness marks for reassembly… before I reassembled everything, I took the opportunity to replace the outer door window seal. I drilled out three rivets and removed the old piece. Florida sun has not been kind to the window seals. I install the replacement part and it functions and looks much better. Now I can put the door back together. It’s going to be replaced, but I don’t have the new parts yet, so I’ll need to get back together as best I can. I button it up and give it a whirl. The window goes up and down nicely, job done.
I clean up the garage and chill out for a bit, Day 4 is over.
Parts replaced today:
Window Motor $35
Window Seal $0 (came with the car)
Parts cost so far: $180
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