Passenger Door Window

In my last post, I showed that the rear sash bushing in the window regulator was missing.  I had thought about machining a replacement bushing in Delrin, but in the end decided it wasn't worth it.  Instead of spending hours machining something that may or may not work I decided to just get a new regulator.  I am anxious to get this car on the road and spending time on non-EV-related activities just doesn't seem worth it to me.  So I found junkie regulators for $50 (plus shipping, because none of the boneyards near me have Saturn coupes), or brand-spanking-new regulators from RockAuto.com for $80 plus or minus.  No brainer for me - a few clicks of the mouse and 2 days later a brand-new regulator shows up at my door.  Nice!

I don't have any pictures of the intermediate steps, but suffice it to say that the new regulator went in pretty easily.  However, when I tried to put the glass back in it didn't seem to want to go in straight.  And once I was able to wiggle it into what I thought was the right spot it seemed jammed.  Thinking that there might be some debris in the window track, I started feeling around inside and discovered that the rubber guide at the front window track was twisted which prevented the window from sliding properly.  Aha!  So that's why the bushing broke in the first place!

Well, I couldn't access that rubber piece from the inside of the door so I had to take the outer (plastic) panel off to access it.  It actually was fairly easy to do - remove 3 nuts and the side-view mirror comes off, pry out the outer window trim, undo 10 torx bolts, and voila! the panel falls off.  Once the outer panel was off it was easy to readjust the rubber guide - here are a couple of pics of it already fixed (forgot to take a picture of its original state!).

With the exterior panel off, installing the window was a breeze.  I checked the operation of the window a few times (works beautifully) and then reassembled the door.  Of course I forgot to install one of the styrofoam pieces (doh!), so I had to take it apart and put it together again, but it's amazing how easy it is to do something for the second time.

A couple of pics of the newly assembled and perfectly operating door.  Success!

Yah, I know.  The car is filthy.  All in good time.........

Now, if only the EV parts of the car can go together as easily.