KenP

My 84' 944 N/A has power windows wihch work, but rather slowly. I know it has been left outside for a number of year, by the PO. I know have it undercover with a cloth car cover.

Do I need to clean something or replace a motor? I have not dug into the door panel to see what's going on, but with a little help from the Rennlist crew, maybe I'll know what to look for or do.

Thanks,

KenP

Macfreak007

first try cleaning the window rails, this seems to fix the problem for me, i think this gunk is what causes motor to fail in the long run also

Mike S

Yeah....i'll 2nd that. I cleaned and regreased the rails/joints and it worked a lot better. Still not as fast as I'd like...but much better.

Hans

Try cleaning the electrical contacts on the motor & switches as well, the usual grounds included...
Corrosion here will drop the voltage available for the motor, slowing it down real fast
TakeCare

led

how did you guys go about cleaning the rails? Spray them with wd40 or degreaser?

shortyboy

why is it always the passenger side?

led

Now that you mention it, the PS is the worst of the two on my car also.

johne

Along similar lines, a couple weeks ago my drivers side window stopped working. I tried swapping the switches in the door and the drivers side still did not work and the passenger side did. I'm guessing I'm probably going to have to take the door panel off. So what should I look for when I take it off. AKA what usually breaks?

thanks,
John

SoCal Driver

Corroded connections on the motor.

Canuck924S

Seeing is how I design power windows for a living I think i can offer some input. The reason the passenger side is slower on most cars is that the line resistance of the wiring to the motor is higher on the right side then on the left side. The motors are usually symmetrically opposite meaning they can produce the same power but the right side sees less of the vehicle voltage than the left side so it produces less torque. Cleaning the motor terminals and the connectors will improve the resistance if they are corrodid and cleaning the glass runs may reduce the seal drags that the motor needs to overcome thus improving the overall efficiency. You motor will also become weaker overtime so if the above options don't work it may just be time to get a new motor which is usually pretty expensive on older cars.

Canuck924S

john, do you here the motor attempt to move when you push the button? Try hooking up a multi meter and see if it draws current when you push the button. If it does the motor could be internally seized. If it draws no current then there is either an open circuit inside the motor or bad wiring to the motor. Check to see if there is power and ground at the motor terminals with a test light when you push the button. If there is then you need to replace the motor. If there is not then you get to have fun trying to find where the wiring is bad in the system.

Scootin159

Another thing to look for is what caused mine to go bad. I'm not sure how it happend as it came this way from the P.O., but the gear teeth on the "arm" (I'm sure there's a technical name) of the assembly were actually stripped. This made it so the motor would turn, but the window wouldn't move.

Now that I think of it, I replaced the assembly, but didn't clean the rails while I was in there. I remember checking if the window moved easily (almost dropping it in the process :-/), but never actually cleaned the rails. Maybe I should go in sometime and clean this up. I could clean up the electrical connections while I'm in there to maybe speed things up.

johne

Excellent, thanks for the advice fellas. If anyone else has some experience feel free to chip in.

John

Dave in Chicago

It is neither fun, nor inexpensive, but the ultimate answer is to replace the regulators and motors. 15+ years of up and down will eventually do these parts in (stripped gear teeth, bent arms, tired motors). Cleaning the rails while in there will help quite a bit. I replaced all of the above this year when driver's side started to stick in transit (kinda skip a bit in last 2 inches of travel).

The good news is, I now have the fastest and most consistent power windows I have seen in any 944-series car. The bad news is I had to spend WAY too much $$$ to get there.

Aftermarket regulator/motor assemblies are readily available (I believe they're made in Spain) and can be had for less than $150 per side as I recall.

Sam Lin

How exactly do you clean the rails? I have the door panels off all the time, but never saw a real easy way?

Hmmm...might want to run a new power window wire into the doors when I wire for speakers next time then...

Sam