Door Internals Window Mechanisms Regulators, Etc

[Captain Obvious]

Thanks for the details guys.  @cgsheen1 @zKars When I first started messing with the window, it would not move at all. I traced that issue to the front nylon guide that was stuck frozen solid. I lubed that up and got it moving smooth and easy, and after that, I was able to get the window to move, but it still required an uncomfortable amount of force. And that's when I came here for guidance.

So I'm guessing that the problem now is the regulator bent screwing with the geometry. I'll pull stuff apart and see what I can find.

The taking apart will be easy. I'm more worried about the putting back together and getting stuff adjusted.

[Captain Obvious]

So I did what I originally suggested and just started taking bolts out of the door guts until everything collapsed (gently) inside and then fished out the pieces. At this point I have all the window parts out of the door shell. That was the easy part.

I looked the regulator over and found maybe a little bit of bend tweaking? Not having a known good "gold standard" example here, it's hard for me to know what is an intentional bend vs. what is the result of previous reefing as @zKars indicated. So I did some very minor modification adjustments hoping that I was moving things in the correct direction?

The only other thing I found of real interest was some torn up flexible washers behind the plastic roller wheels. Reference the tarp grommet mod by  @240Ziggyhttps://www.classiczcars.com/forums/topic/47753-window-not-lining-up/?page=2

I'm not convinced that those flexible washers really do anything other than act as an anti-vibration dampener, but I have to decide if it's worth the risk that they do more than just that.

So other than that, of course, I've got old dried up grease that was more like candle wax at this point. I will clean all that out and replace with new. 

What are the thoughts on those flexible washers? I say all they do is take up the slop and keep stuff from vibrating. What say Ye? 

[Namerow]

The rollers on my guides were fairly wobbly, so I decided that the flexible washers were providing not just a preload but also a self-steering effect for the rollers...

 

The tarp grommets definitely take up the clearance slop, but they're not flexible...  

 

I decided to take a different approach.  A search through my 'this may come in handy some day' box of materials produced a small sheet of nice, shiny, thin-and-flexible vinyl.  I already had a sheet of closed-cell neoprene foam, ~ 3/32" thick, that I'd used earlier as a gasket material when restring my Z's heater.  Using weatherstrip adhesive, I glued up a composite sheet with the vinyl on both faces and the neoprene as the core, ending up with something that was both stretchy and slippery...

 

From there, I used a hole punch and scissors to create a set of washers...

 

The new washers were stretchy enough that they could be pulled over the nylon roller...

 

Once in place, they gave me what I was looking for...

 

[Captain Obvious]

Thanks for the input. I was thinking the same thing as you... All you really need is something compressible to take up the gap, and I really like what you came up with. Especially the part about being able to stretch it over the nylon roller so you don't have to take all the rollers off.

Only thing I'm still not convinced about is the real necessity for the existence at all, other than vibration prevention.

You said your the rollers on your guides were fairly wobbly and that the flexible washers helped steer the rollers. I'm skeptical. The forces on those wheels can be high enough to bend the metal arms of the regulators. There's no way a little piece of flexible plastic is going to do anything to steer those wheels under that kind of load. I'm thinking that those wheels are gonna go where those wheels want to go whether there is a flexible backing washer or not.

That said... If I can figure out something here that is similar to what you did, I'm gonna copy it.    Really necessary or not.

[zKars]

The vast majority of the doors I’ve worked on do not have the backing washers on the rollers anymore, but work just fine after some lube and adjustment. As long as the rollers roll smoothly and the tracks they run in are clean and not collapsed or bent (seen some very strange bent and/or collapsed front guide tracks……) 

Yes and lots of old grease in the form of congealed wax. I use anti-seize as the new grease. Doors are going to get dust in them and that will get trapped in the grease, but……

Love the solution of the slippery and slip-over-ly-ness of the composite washers!  The rattling in doors when being closed surely would be reduced with these in place. 

Edited April 8 by zKars

[Captain Obvious]

OK, I cleaned out all the old tracks, lubed everything with fresh lube, and I made a couple "space taker-up" washers to replace two original flexible plastic washers. One of the originals was in good shape so I left it alone, but here's what I did for the other two.

Two layers of shelf anti-slip foam and one layer of vinyl. I wasn't sure how the shelf foam would handle the abrasion of sliding against the track metal, so (like @Namerow) I used a layer of vinyl on that sliding surface. Here's some pics:

 

[Captain Obvious]

At this point, I got the door guts back in and it's a whole lot better than it was. the alignment of everything isn't perfect, but I can roll the window up and down without excessive force, and it's pretty good. Good enough for me to move to the next emergency at least.

Between the help from you guys and a couple youtube videos, I managed to get the glass back into the doors and onto the regulator wheels with way less issue than I expected!  Thanks guys!!

[Av8ferg]

This might be too short 45mm =1.77in. My micrometer had a dead battery [emoji37]

[Av8ferg]

Found another one in my stash. This looks like 45 m.

But it has a “6” not a 7