Vonov

I couldn't find any threads or relevant info handy when I started this job, so I decided to do my own. Hope this will be helpful to someone. (Note: this is for an early 944, later models may be different.)

About a year ago, I bought a 944 w/ a busted engine; it's been sitting in front of my office waiting for me to decide what I was going to do about the powerplant/and for me to break loose time and space to work on it. The kid I bought it from...well, his Mom was running out of patience with the car being in her front yard, he was getting ready to start college, long story short, I got the car for 600 bucks. Fuchs wheels, decent interior, body a little rough, and timing belt engine destruction.

Anyway, someone apparently decided the window motors were dead, took the windows off the track for whatever reason, and left them in the bottom of the doors, loose. Still can't believe they were still intact. I needed to secure the interior from the elements, so I removed the regulator/motor assembly from the doors, to find out that the motors were still good, but the geardrive on them was so stiff from lack of lubrication, that they wouldn't have moved till Judgement Day.

Here's how I did the R & R.

Vonov

First, make sure the window is level in its channel, and raised to the top, or nearly so. Secure it in place with zip ties, snugged tightly around each of the window channel guides, just below the glass. Here's a pic of the overall assembly mounted in the door; the bolts marked in red hold the regulator/motor assembly in place; the ones marked in yellow hold a guide channel that gives the regulator some leverage for the rest of the assembly to work against. The green marks a small sheet-metal fastener that serves as a handy locating point to help you line up the bolts during reassembly.

Vonov

Making sure you've already secured the window glass in place, undo the bolts marked in yellow. The open part of the guide channel that these bolts hold in place, faces toward the outside of the door, with the flat tab toward the rear of the car (arrow). once you have the bolts out, slide the channel off the plastic roller on the end of the arm.

Vonov

Once the fulcrum arm (yellow bolts) is free, carefully disconnect the plastic connector on the bottom of the motor (location marked in blue--see first pic above)---it should pull straight down. You can then remove the bolts marked in red, being careful to support the assembly as you remove the last one. There are two plastic rollers in guide channels similar to the one already removed, near the top of the door, and hidden by the door's structure. Moving the entire assembly towards the front of the car will free those from their channels, and allow removal of the assembly thru the larger opening in the door panel (arrow).

Replacement is the reverse of removal.


Testing of the motor can be done using a small motorcycle battery and applying pos and neg leads to the two terminals on the motor (NOTE: you cannot operate the motor by clipping the negative from the battery to the outer case of the motor assembly as a ground--it won't operate except by using the two terminals on the motor--something it took me a while to remember, lol).

Vonov

One thing I forgot to add...the assembly is much easier to remove if you can "collapse" the arms to the "down" position; i.e., if the arms were a pair of scissors, they would be in the closed position. The easiest way to do this, of course, is if you have motors which are operational; if not, it may become necessary to remove the motor from the assembly itself, by means of the two screws which attach the motor at the output shaft end of the motor.

FabilichuS

I have done this 6 times. Only to try and fix my left windowmotor, and it still stops. When i disasemble it and clean it the think woorks for like 1 week and then it don't move again. What can it be ?

Vonov

Sorry I didn't see this sooner...but here's my best guess (maybe someone else has this problem): after making sure the window is not hanging up in the channel, either check the contacts inside BOTH window switches, or replace them with new or known good ones; another possibility is dirty contacts on the armature in the motor. If you are reasonably handy with such things, you might try removing and disassembling the motor; assuming the brushes are still good, the armature rotor contacts where they contact the brushes can be cleaned with a common pencil or ink rubber eraser. It will clean them without abrading them too much, or shorting them out due to metal dust left between the contacts from sanding them.