Update: the replacement of the window regulator has been accomplished (blog article).
One of my current projects is to replace the window regulator in the driver’s side door of my car.
As we all know, the window regulator is inside the car door. It has two tracks, seen at the left and right sides of this picture, being a shiny steel color. Each track has a runner, mostly black in color in this picture. The two runners go up and down their respective tracks absolutely in tandem. The reason that the two runners do this is that there is a figure-8 of steel cables. The cables run up and down the tracks and they pass through sleeves that form an X between the tracks. In the middle you can see a spool. The cables are wrapped around the spool. We cannot really see the steel cables because they are on the other side of the tracks and they are inside the sleeves.
The window glass has mounting points at its two lower corners. Each mounting point is connected to one of the runners. The idea is that as the runners go up and down, the window glass goes up and down accordingly. Because the runners are in strict tandem, the glass remains exactly level as it goes up and down.
The idea is that you could put a crank on the spool. If you were to do that, then turning the crank one way or the other would make the window go up and down. Of course what we really put on the spool is an electric motor. The motor makes the window go up and down.
What happened recently is that there was a very disturbing crunching sound when I would try to raise and lower the window. And eventually the window sort of got stuck at about the half-way point. I disassembled the car door using these tools.
I opened things up to see the steel cable. Here is part of it. As you can see, some of the strands of the cable broke.
I ordered up a replacement regulator on Amazon. It will arrive tomorrow. Until then, I am driving the car around with a door that looks rather out of the ordinary.
During this time, I open the car door by pulling on the end of a steel cable.
Amazon is amazing. I had this happen on a couple of Japanese cars with hundreds of thousands of miles on it in the days before Amazon and I had to live with it until I got a new car because the dealer quoted like $800 to fix it and other mechanics were not much less or referred me to the dealer for repair