Starting to do my own work on my junk...
#1
01-07-2008, 06:03 AM
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Starting to do my own work on my junk...
Here is my window story...
When I bought the Dodge I had a window that did not work. The driver's side window had a bad regulator in it and would not come back up when put down...
So, I got the lads to order me a window cranking system from a junkyard and got it in today.
I apologize that there are no pix, as I am new to this fixing my own junk and turning my own wrenches.
In any case, today I learned that the 10mm bolts that hold the window mechanism in are a PITA to find when they fall to the driveway. Also, I learned that just because there are 6 bolts there that look the same, it does not automatically mean that one needs to remove them all. I was stuck for quite a while as I was unable to get the window to line up in the track by the back of the door. I was unable to line it up as the track in the front was moving freely because the bolts holding it had been removed by a moron just scant moments earlier in the whole evolution.
When I put the bolts for the forward track back it allowed the window to ride up between the two tracks and made it much easier to control.
Additionally, where the X-shaped piece bolts to the runner at the bottom of the glass... This is attached by two 10mm nuts that do NOT, repeat NOT need to be completely removed. Removing the aforementioned nuts brings it from a job requiring two hands to one that Vishnu would find taxing. After reinstalling these two bolts and extensively exploring my vocabulary, I was able to slot the rail over the nuts and slide the whole thing home b4 tightening it all down, just in time to discover that sometimes just because a nut is loose does not mean that it should be tightened right away lest it preclude you from lining up some other holes and bolts that are related to it in a way that you are to this point unaware of.
After some additional vocabulary exploration, I loosened the nuts and tried again to line up the holes with the bolts that I was dropping on the driveway while standing up bent over just far enough to make my back sore. Then I had a brainwave... What if I was sitting down? I walked into the house and took a long look at the dining room chairs and considered carefully what would ensue if Blondie was to glimpse me sitting in the driveway in a shaker captain's chair next to the truck with the door open... Fawk... There must be a plan B. There was! Off to the porch to grab a deck chair. Right height, comfortable, the neighbours must have just been waiting for the duelling banjos.
Once seated, I was afforded an advantageous vantage point from which to nip my arm between the hole in the door and the bottom of the window as my fingers were being caressed by the closing X-shaped bracket from two vocabulary explorations ago. At this point, I called my good friend Scott to avail upon him to come and supervise me as I am clearly the rainman of window track regulator installation, but alas he is at WalMart and thanking his lucky stars that he will not be subjected to supervising my tomfoolery. I thank him for his time and then go back to what I was doing. What WAS I doing? Who the f u c k really knows, I am a mechanical idiot savant, with just enough knowledge to be dangerous, but not enough to blow my nose if this knowledge was dynamite... But I digress.
As I am trying to get the whole thing to line up, I am struck by the thought that if I was to wind the window up a little maybe the holes would line up. Great idea if it was a manual window, but NO... It is a power window that is unplugged. So "plug it in rainman" thinks I. Great idea, if from my seated position in my padded chair I was gifted with arms 6 feet long to put the keys in the ignition. Keys that were sitting on the seat, mere inches from my reach, but that could have been 4 miles away for all the good that they were doing me with my arm nipped YET AGAIN
" src="http://s2.images.proboards.com/angry.gif" border=0> by that accursed X bracket. SO... I stand up, stick the cushion from the chair into the bracket, freeing my arm so I can contort myself, thereby giving me access to stick my boot into the hole as I pray not to slip as I lean over to put the key in the ignition to give power to the switch to lower the window to free my foot to remove the seat cushion to line up the holes to put in the bolts to tighten down to raise and lower the window. I am now contorted in such a fashion so as to get a contract offer from Cirque de Soleil, if only, if ONLY they were coming by Auburn Drive at 1400 in the afternoon. They were not, so I got back to my work, my dreams of flying gracefully through the air in Vegas crushed not by my corpulance nor by my total lack of trapeze experience, but by geography. Fawkers. 
As I lower the window, the X opens up and the whole unit clicks into place and I can see the threads through the holes in the door!! RTFO!!! WHERE ARE THOSE DAMN BOLTS?!?!?! On the driveway, hiding, like an altar boy from a priest. I find them and screw them into the holes and tighten them up and summon Management to see my triumphant victory over the mechanical bane of my existance as I stand next to the bare metal door holding the switch by the wires exhorting her to marvel that the window now goes up and down, as I completely ignore the fact that the whole door is disassembled. She looks at the window and opines that it would be most excellent if I can put it back together. She rolls her eyes, kisses me and goes back inside.
I get the whole thing ready to put back together and BLAST!!! I have to get those small plugs out of the door and into the door skin before I line the whole thing up and bang it all into place with all the plugs lined up. It is to laugh... This wont happen. I line it all up, push on the skin and it clicks home. I hit the switch and NOTHING... Now what? I have to troubleshoot... I get ready to call Scott and as I get 4 digits into the number, I happen to glance at the driveway where the keys are lying there mocking me. My brain leaps (well LEAP is a strong word) into gear and I deduce that without the key in the ignition, the power windows will have no power. I put the key into the ignition, turn it, hit the switch and the window works.
Like Ripley would say...
Believe it, or not....
When I bought the Dodge I had a window that did not work. The driver's side window had a bad regulator in it and would not come back up when put down...
So, I got the lads to order me a window cranking system from a junkyard and got it in today.
I apologize that there are no pix, as I am new to this fixing my own junk and turning my own wrenches.
In any case, today I learned that the 10mm bolts that hold the window mechanism in are a PITA to find when they fall to the driveway. Also, I learned that just because there are 6 bolts there that look the same, it does not automatically mean that one needs to remove them all. I was stuck for quite a while as I was unable to get the window to line up in the track by the back of the door. I was unable to line it up as the track in the front was moving freely because the bolts holding it had been removed by a moron just scant moments earlier in the whole evolution.
When I put the bolts for the forward track back it allowed the window to ride up between the two tracks and made it much easier to control.
Additionally, where the X-shaped piece bolts to the runner at the bottom of the glass... This is attached by two 10mm nuts that do NOT, repeat NOT need to be completely removed. Removing the aforementioned nuts brings it from a job requiring two hands to one that Vishnu would find taxing. After reinstalling these two bolts and extensively exploring my vocabulary, I was able to slot the rail over the nuts and slide the whole thing home b4 tightening it all down, just in time to discover that sometimes just because a nut is loose does not mean that it should be tightened right away lest it preclude you from lining up some other holes and bolts that are related to it in a way that you are to this point unaware of.
After some additional vocabulary exploration, I loosened the nuts and tried again to line up the holes with the bolts that I was dropping on the driveway while standing up bent over just far enough to make my back sore. Then I had a brainwave... What if I was sitting down? I walked into the house and took a long look at the dining room chairs and considered carefully what would ensue if Blondie was to glimpse me sitting in the driveway in a shaker captain's chair next to the truck with the door open... Fawk... There must be a plan B. There was! Off to the porch to grab a deck chair. Right height, comfortable, the neighbours must have just been waiting for the duelling banjos.
Once seated, I was afforded an advantageous vantage point from which to nip my arm between the hole in the door and the bottom of the window as my fingers were being caressed by the closing X-shaped bracket from two vocabulary explorations ago. At this point, I called my good friend Scott to avail upon him to come and supervise me as I am clearly the rainman of window track regulator installation, but alas he is at WalMart and thanking his lucky stars that he will not be subjected to supervising my tomfoolery. I thank him for his time and then go back to what I was doing. What WAS I doing? Who the f u c k really knows, I am a mechanical idiot savant, with just enough knowledge to be dangerous, but not enough to blow my nose if this knowledge was dynamite... But I digress.
As I am trying to get the whole thing to line up, I am struck by the thought that if I was to wind the window up a little maybe the holes would line up. Great idea if it was a manual window, but NO... It is a power window that is unplugged. So "plug it in rainman" thinks I. Great idea, if from my seated position in my padded chair I was gifted with arms 6 feet long to put the keys in the ignition. Keys that were sitting on the seat, mere inches from my reach, but that could have been 4 miles away for all the good that they were doing me with my arm nipped YET AGAIN
" src="http://s2.images.proboards.com/angry.gif" border=0> by that accursed X bracket. SO... I stand up, stick the cushion from the chair into the bracket, freeing my arm so I can contort myself, thereby giving me access to stick my boot into the hole as I pray not to slip as I lean over to put the key in the ignition to give power to the switch to lower the window to free my foot to remove the seat cushion to line up the holes to put in the bolts to tighten down to raise and lower the window. I am now contorted in such a fashion so as to get a contract offer from Cirque de Soleil, if only, if ONLY they were coming by Auburn Drive at 1400 in the afternoon. They were not, so I got back to my work, my dreams of flying gracefully through the air in Vegas crushed not by my corpulance nor by my total lack of trapeze experience, but by geography. Fawkers. As I lower the window, the X opens up and the whole unit clicks into place and I can see the threads through the holes in the door!! RTFO!!! WHERE ARE THOSE DAMN BOLTS?!?!?! On the driveway, hiding, like an altar boy from a priest. I find them and screw them into the holes and tighten them up and summon Management to see my triumphant victory over the mechanical bane of my existance as I stand next to the bare metal door holding the switch by the wires exhorting her to marvel that the window now goes up and down, as I completely ignore the fact that the whole door is disassembled. She looks at the window and opines that it would be most excellent if I can put it back together. She rolls her eyes, kisses me and goes back inside.
I get the whole thing ready to put back together and BLAST!!! I have to get those small plugs out of the door and into the door skin before I line the whole thing up and bang it all into place with all the plugs lined up. It is to laugh... This wont happen. I line it all up, push on the skin and it clicks home. I hit the switch and NOTHING... Now what? I have to troubleshoot... I get ready to call Scott and as I get 4 digits into the number, I happen to glance at the driveway where the keys are lying there mocking me. My brain leaps (well LEAP is a strong word) into gear and I deduce that without the key in the ignition, the power windows will have no power. I put the key into the ignition, turn it, hit the switch and the window works.
Like Ripley would say...
Believe it, or not....
#3
01-07-2008, 02:40 PM
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