My 8 year old uses rear window as bottle crusher - what parts will I need?

[jjbuzzman]

I picked my two boys up from school the other day, and a friend asked me to bring her little girl also. I didn't take much notice that my 8 year old in the back seat carried an empty liter soda bottle with him, and he was having a big time showing off for this little girl, and decided that it would be impressive and cool to show her how he could crush the soda bottle in the window. So he goes up and down with the window a few passes, crushing the bottle a little more with each pass, until on the last pass, the window gives way.

Yeah, I know - how did I not notice this? Good question. No good answer other than, with 2 wild boys, you get used to tuning them out some!

So now the glass is floating free - you can pull it up and down by hand, and it's not attached to the mechanism. When I cycle the switch I can hear the motor run.

I thought one of you gurus could speculate as to what parts I will need to fix this? With parts on hand I could take it apart and fix it in one session.

Oh, and this just goes to show at how early an age women can begin to cause damage in a guy's life!

[goody90q45]

Chances are the little monster damaged the window regulator which is the sliding bar/cable mechanism that moves the window up and down. It attaches to two plastic tabs mounted on the bottom of the window. I doubt you've broken the window tabs, they're pretty stout.

It isn't difficult to remove the door panel in order to verify what's broken. Remove the armrest by wedging it backwards with a screwdriver, and then pry off the plastic door latch trim. Removing these two pieces will expose the 3 or 4 screws that need to be removed to pop the door panel loose, starting at the bottom. From there you can operate the window switch and see what's broke.

Window regulators are about $130 from the stealership. I have used ones from partouts. You can email me if you're interested. Hope that the window tabs aren't broken since I wouldn't be surprised if you'd have to buy the whole window to get these. Good luck.

[jjbuzzman]

I see where I forgot to specify my model - it's a 1990 Q45.

And I have an idea - to keep my window up I had to tape it to the roof line with duct tape - how embarrassing! So I'm going to park it on the corner down from Q45tech's shop. And after a week or so he won't be able to stand seeing that duct tape degrading our brand image and he'll fix it for free.

[goody90q45]

All 90-96 Q45's use the same regulators.

[maxnix]

I think you need the optional Hannibal Lecter restraints for the rear seat.

[qship96]

Stick the little monsters head in the other window and do the same trick he did to the other one!

[ScottJackson]

On the rear door panel, you also need to remove the ashtray and the two screws behind it before you can pull the door panel. It's a little tricky because there's a little plastic latch you must disengage to release the ashtray door fully. Don't force it out or you'll break it.

[Q451990]

Please, oh please, get the duct tape off of there! You don't want to damage your paint or trim with that stuff

My temporary fix for bad window regulators is to open the door up to confirm that the part is bad... manually hold the window up in place, and then lock a pair of vice grips on the track of the regulator to hold the window in place while I wait for the part to come in from Joe.

Good luck!

Heath

[AlphaKilo470]

Yeah, the duct tape takes no time to wreak havock. I had a friend who's power window on his car went bad and the duct tape was on for about a week and when it came off the paint around the window looked pretty bad. There's also a duct tape damage on my car's paint from duct tape the previous owner had put on at one point.