Plus 2 window winding failure
Posted: Mon Jan 23, 2023 3:46 am
On Saturday the passenger-side window on my my car got stuck in the fully down position. I was out with some fellow Lotus-enthusiasts and as I was about to head for home, I lowered the window to deliver a jest to the guy in the Elise next to me about his Toyota engine. Then the window would not move upward, not even a noise from a straining motor or a shudder from hitting an obstacle. Worse, the trip home would require an hour of 80 mph and it was a chilly day. While it's nice that Mr. Hickman's design doesn't create much interiour buffeting with a window open at high speed, the extra noise was annoying, especially for Mrs. Veg who was with me. At least it wasn't raining. All the way home we both repeatedly took jabs at the switch but to no avail.
Today I dug into things to see what the trouble is. I've eliminated electrical faults- no connections were found to have come loose, the switch does deliver current and the wiring from the switch to the motor does as well. After wrestling the motor out and using some jump-leads to apply current, it spins eagerly and smoothly in both directions as it should, since it's a fresh rebuilt unit that has been operated no more than 100 times.
Mechanically everything looks sound as well- it's all still well-lubricated from when I refurbished everything a few years ago (and has been sitting since until recently) and the grease is still the right consistency, the bobbin hadn't come out of the track, and looked in good shape when I removed the winder from the door. The glass moves smoothly in its tracks: I can lift it by hand from the fully-down position and it doesn't feel like anything is catching.
So with no fault identified, has anybody else experienced this, and perhaps found some fault I may have overlooked?
Part of me thinks that if I put it all back together everything will be OK and I'll never know what the problem was*, but another part of me wonders if it'll happen again and cause me more frustration.
*Something I've seen happen in my work as a service-engineer for a maker of analytical instruments. Sometimes just opening them up seems to put the fear into them and they behave after I've poked about inside and found no fault.
Today I dug into things to see what the trouble is. I've eliminated electrical faults- no connections were found to have come loose, the switch does deliver current and the wiring from the switch to the motor does as well. After wrestling the motor out and using some jump-leads to apply current, it spins eagerly and smoothly in both directions as it should, since it's a fresh rebuilt unit that has been operated no more than 100 times.
Mechanically everything looks sound as well- it's all still well-lubricated from when I refurbished everything a few years ago (and has been sitting since until recently) and the grease is still the right consistency, the bobbin hadn't come out of the track, and looked in good shape when I removed the winder from the door. The glass moves smoothly in its tracks: I can lift it by hand from the fully-down position and it doesn't feel like anything is catching.
So with no fault identified, has anybody else experienced this, and perhaps found some fault I may have overlooked?
Part of me thinks that if I put it all back together everything will be OK and I'll never know what the problem was*, but another part of me wonders if it'll happen again and cause me more frustration.
*Something I've seen happen in my work as a service-engineer for a maker of analytical instruments. Sometimes just opening them up seems to put the fear into them and they behave after I've poked about inside and found no fault.