Tracing power window problem -- Need help!

My driver's door power window quit working awhile ago and I've just now begun trying to fix it, but have run into all sorts of dead ends. For the life of me, I cannot figure out what the source of the problem is!!

 

Let me explain.

 

1. After the door card was removed, and upon pushing the PW button, I could hear the motor "click" but nothing would happen. If power was getting to the window, I figured some part of the motor went bad. Ordered a new motor/regulator.

 

2. Upon receiving the new motor/regulator unit and prior to installing, I removed the motor wiring harness and plugged it into the new unit to ensure this was the issue. The new motor worked just fine.

 

3. I removed the old regulator and replaced it with the new unit. Problem solved!? Not quite. With the new motor, the window goes down fine...however, when the switch is pulled to bring the window up, it goes about .5 inch and stops. Pull again, half inch again. Watch here: https://gofile.io/?c=CoR7cK. Additionally, auto-down and auto-up are non-functional.

 

4. I removed the motor wiring harness and powered the motor directly from the battery. Goes up and down just fine.

 

5. I swapped the P/W relay in the fuse box of engine compartment. No change.

 

6. I picked up a master switch unit (the door unit with all window switches and lock switch) at a local junkyard. No change.

 

SO.... I'm stumped. New motor, switch, relay.... what else is there?

The window may be binding in the track causing the breaker to trip. Check all the guides and edges for anything that might be causing the window to bind up. As for the one up and down, the window has to be run all the way in both directions for the auto up and down to be taught after the motor is disconnected or the battery is disconnected.

Good thoughts... I had heard that about auto-up/down. I'll wait til it operates properly to worry about that.

 

As for the binding... would that be a possibility even when the window operates just fine with direct battery power? My understanding was the breaker is part of the motor unit, and the motor seems to work fine with direct power (#4 from OP). Do you know if that's the case?

The switch unit has some sort of circuitry in it that stops the driver's window if the current draw is above a certain threshold, so if you feed power directly to the motor without going through the switch, it'll keep on truckin' until it reaches the end of the track whether your fingers are in the way or not. The other 3 windows are powered off of a different fuse, and there's a separate self-resetting breaker somewhere in the dash harness that serves the same purpose.

 

If it's only binding on the way up, it could be out of the track or out of adjustment. I'd think that if there was some sort of stickum in the guides, that'd affect you equally on the way up and down, but maybe the switch's amp draw threshold is higher (or nonexistent, and therefore equal to the fuse rating) on the way down.

cww516 really helpful. Thanks a lot.

 

I will look at the guides and see if anything needs to be cleaned or adjusted. Is there a proper way to reset the positioning of the glass? I'm not sure how much wiggle room there is where the white plastic clip attaches on the bottom of the glass, but maybe if I loosen those I can try to tweak it.

 

I will report back after trying this, though it may not be until this weekend when I can work on it.

Just spent some time working on this. I tried repositioning the glass, loosening the clip attached to the glass, loosening the screws of the entire assembly, all to create space for the glass not to bind. I also pulled the glass up with my hand while pulling the switch up, to aid the motor in pulling the glass up and prevent any overloading. None of these things affected the behavior of the window—it looks just like the video in #3 above every time.

 

I’m wondering if I got a bad regulator assembly. If it is binding somewhere and that is tripping the circuit, it is doing so equally throughout the entire upward movement. I wonder if the binding is somewhere in the assembly and not the glass.

 

I’m thinking of returning this regulator unit and ordering another. Thoughts? Am I missing something?

 

 

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