How to Replace Window Regulator 2000-04 Ford Focus

Hey, friends. It's Len here at 1A Auto. Today, I'm working on a 2001 Ford Focus, and I want to show you how to replace a window regulator. It's going to be a very easy job, and I want to be the guy who shows you how to do it. If you need this or any other part, you can always check us out at 1aauto.com. Thanks.

One of the first things we want to do is just make sure that we have power to where we're working. Okay, definitely have power. The issue with this one is when the window goes up, it binds because the window regulator is no good, so we're just going to go ahead and replace that real quick.

This is what's going on. The window can just flop around. When it goes up, it kind of kinks off to the side and locks up. We'll take care of that. First thing we're going to do is remove this black plastic piece right here. The way to do that is to grab from the front, pull it out, and then slide it this way. There's going to be two little hooky dos right here, and then one that goes in straight right there, and of course, there's going to be wiring for the mirror, so don't pull it out here. Just grab it, give it a little tug. There's the little hooky dos, they grab onto here. This is the pin that goes into there. You can either leave this one or take it off, whatever you want to do. It's really not going to affect very much unless, of course, you shut the door.

This little flap, pop that out of there. It's a Torx head in there. Let's see. Should be a T15, looks like that little star. Pull that screw out of there. That's what it looks like. Set this aside. This can move around a little bit. I'm just going to grab onto this. Just going to come right under here. Pull this little piece off. I came from right here. You can go from down there if you want. Definitely won't work from up here obviously because this has to go in first, and then that goes in. We'll set this aside.

Inside here there should be a couple of screws. Those are Phillips heads, so I'll grab a Phillips head in a second. We can feel along the door panel. There's little channels where there's more screws coming around, so we're going to remove all of those screws. I'm going to grab a Phillips head. We'll get these out of here, too.

We got our Phillips head, try to get it in here. That one is not a Phillips head. This one up here is a Phillips head. Here is what we're dealing with. This bolt right here is 1/4 inch. If you're using a nut driver-type screwdriver, generally speaking, that's 1/4 inch in there. We'll set this aside. Phillips head, Phillips head. Pop this little panel off right here. Just use my trim tool. Here we are. We're going to disconnect these. Right here, have what should be a little push. Doesn't look like it's much of a push connector anymore, so I'm just going to go like this, try to pry in between. Just pull that out. Always take a look at your electrical connectors, make sure there's no funny colors in there. Looks good.

Got another little push area right here. Push on that, give this a wiggle. Take a look at our connector. That looks good as well. This went this way, your door lock switch, window switches. We'll set this aside. With all this like this, I'm just going to go ahead and take this off just so it's not flopping around and in my way. Go right under here. Give that a little tug. Take a peek, looks good. Now, I don't have anything big flopping around right there in my face. Open up the door. We have some Torx bit 15 screws. It's the same all the way around the door. That's what those look like so far. That's the tool.

Eight screws from the door panel all along the edges there. We'll set these aside. We should be able to grab our door panel at this point, pull it away from the door. You want to be careful for any wiring that may get caught as we do this. What we're going to do is pull away from the door like I said. Lift it straight up because along the top of the door panel there's a little hooky do. There we are. There's our door panel. We'll get this out of the way.

Just get the majority of this sticky stuff off of here. I like to use one of these scrapers. You can use whatever you want, but this stuff right here, generally speaking, is very sticky and if you get it on your clothes or in your hair, it's going to cause an issue so keep that in mind. It's time to get this off of here. The way to do that is there's hooks going around this. This one kind of goes this direction. This one over here goes up and down. This one kind of goes this way. This one goes this way. It looks as though basically if I just rock this thing, I should be able to pop it out. I'm just going to go like that. Essentially, it was in like this. This is what it looked like. You can see the way all the little hooks went. All I did was go like that counterclockwise and everything just kind of dislodged and then pulled away. We'll set this aside.

We'll keep on removing this goo-covered vapor barrier. If it rips a little bit, it is what it is. It would be nice to try not to rip it as much as possible, but I wouldn't get too mad at yourself if something ripped a little bit because it just is what it is.

Okay, friends, so just to take a look at what's going on in here. This side right here, my left hand goes right up the center of the door. You got a mounting screw, mounting screw, and then this side comes all the way over to this side of the door. This entire vapor barrier is going to come off. We're going to remove the speaker. We'll get that right out of the way. We're going to use our Phillips head screwdriver. Come right over here. That's what the screw looks like. There's four of them going around the speaker. Grab the speaker, pull that out. We've got our wiring. Just going to grab it like that. Take a peek. Looks good. We'll set this aside.

We're going to continue with the vapor barrier. I'm going to grab my little fork tool, pull this off of here so I'll be able to get the vapor barrier completely out of here and we'll set it aside. I've got my little forky tool, so I'm going to go in here, pry this out. That's going to make it so I can get off the vapor barrier. Just continue. If you don't have access to something like this, I don't know what you could maybe use. I wouldn't use a razor blade necessarily because you're going to scratch up your paint and everything. Not that it's visible or anything and I guess it's your vehicle. You can do whatever you need to do, but these are pretty cheap. You can get them at 1aauto.com.

I'm just going to plug this back in for the window. I'm going to put the key in. Now, I'm going to bring the window up and I'm going to try to line the window bolts that where the regulator is, they have little bolts that squeeze the window. I want to bring it up to here, and the other one should come up to right about here and that will make it easy for us to get out. I'm going to grab my key. Get this out of here for now.

That looks pretty good. Get the key out of it. Just disconnect this for now. Inside here and inside here there's a 10mm that look a bit. I'm going to grab my ratchet and a 10mm. I'm going to release those. I'm also going to grab some painter's tape and once I loosen these up, I'm going to just draw the window up, and then I'm going to tape it so that the window will be up and out of the way and I can get the window regulator out of there.

I grab my painter's tape. I've got it ready. Set that right aside. Use my 10mm right over here. Just going to break this free. You don't have to take that bolt completely out, you just need to loosen it up so that the clamp releases the window. Do the same thing for the front side, or forward side I guess.

I'm going to keep turning this one out here because... there it is. Cool. Got my tape. Just going to do this. Grab my window, pull it up. I like to do at least three strips of tape. You can do as many as you want. It depends on how much you like your window, and you could use duct tape if you wanted to. The thing about that is that the duct tape glue is really sticky. This painter's tape is super simple. You just grab it, it pulls right off. Three should be good. The window is not going to drop down.

I'm going to come inside here and take a look at what's going on. We've got an electrical connector here. This goes to the window motor. This is the motor that makes your window go up and down. I'll grab my pocket screwdriver. Just going to see if I can press this down. I just went like this right in between here, give it a little tweak. Pulled it right out. Easy peasy.

We've got this right here, here, here, here, here. We're going to remove all of those. Here we go, using my 8mm. I'm going to grab this. One. This is going to flop around, so make sure you don't hurt yourself with it. There's my two bolts. I come up here now. Start with this. All three of those are loose.

It's time to get the window regulator out of here. I'm just going to try to bring it down. Right down here. Let's see. Take a peek inside, see what's holding this up right here. Just going to find my pocket screwdriver.

Want to be careful for any wiring, obviously. Now, we've removed our window regulator. That's what it looks like right there. We'll grab the new one.

Friends, a quick product comparison for you. Over here, we have our old window regulator out of our 2001 Ford Focus, just removed it. Right over here, we have our brand new quality 1A Auto part. As you can tell, they're both pretty much the exact same. You've got the shaft that goes up the center of the door there. The area that holds the window. You can move along, you've got the strands and everything like that. This is where the cables are inside. On the other sides, you've got the area that holds your window. Brand new here. You've got the one right there. I took them off. We've got the motor. Comes with a brand new motor. Very nice.

The one thing that is different on these is the 1A Auto part comes with a little strand here with cables that come out. The original one, it's pretty much just mounted right to the motor. It really doesn't make much of a difference. If you don't like it being that long, you can just go ahead and tape it up closer. You can do whatever you need to do. Aside from that, all the important stuff is there. You've got your mounting holes, super important. I don't see any reason why this wouldn't be a quality part to install into the vehicle, so I'm going to go ahead and do it. If you need this or any other part, you can always check out 1aauto.com. Thanks.

We're going to just take off this little clip right here. All I do is pry it up, small screwdriver. Easy peasy. We're going to transfer this over to our new window regulator, and that's going to make sure that these cables don't move around too much inside the door panel and get caught on your window. I'm going to put a clip on here. Clip is in. There we are. Easy peasy. Now, we're clear to put this into the door. Watch your fingers for any pinch points, of course. Just bring it in. I'm just going to lay it down. Get this out of the way for now. There we are. Now, I'm just going to take it and bring it up. Get my cable.

I've got one bolt hole there. I'm just going to start it in. I'm not going to tighten it up or anything. Just give it a couple of threads here. This one up here. Grab our motor side, bring it over to where we need it. We can see our holes.

Grab this one. We've got all of those started. We'll just make sure that our wiring is all clear before we go ahead and tighten it down. I'm going to put in this little clip. Let's see. Slide it right in there. That's just going to keep it from moving around. All of our wiring is nice and free. We can connect this in. I'm going to use a wire tie and I'll just button this right up against here so it won't be able to go anywhere, but I'll do that in one minute. First, I'm going to go ahead and do these bolts. Bottomed out, give it a little extra. There it is. Very nice.

I'm going to grab my wire tie. I'm going to do this real quick so I don't forget it and leave it dangling. Last thing I want is this getting caught inside anything in my door panel. I grab my wire tie. Get that out of the way. I'm just going to put it like this, bring it up and inside the door panel. I'm going to use my wire tie. I'm going to go through this whole. Bring it back down around that.

There we are. It's nice and snug. Everything is tucked away. Looks pretty good. Snip that off. Now, let's give this a test real quick before we go too far. Grab our window switch. While we're testing, we can bring the window down and try to get it lined back up with these holes, you know what I mean? Bring the window regulator down. Grab my key.

Very nice. Looks like I'm lined up. Perfect. We know it works. We have it lined back up where it needs to go. Let's take this back off of here. Now, what we can do is we can carefully bring the window back down and get it into the grooves here, the little window channel grooves, or window regulator grooves I should say, and that's going to hold the window. Before I go ahead and untape it, I'm going to just loosen those up real quick just to make sure that they're in the open position. Generally speaking, when they're being shipped, they like to have them snug, so that way there the bolt doesn't come out. You're just going to want to loosen them up.

That one is open. You should be able to reach right in and separate them just like that. Just went... Now, I'm going to bring the window down. It's going to sit right in here, and then I'm going to snug up those bolts. It's going to squeeze down and hold onto the window. We'll get this out of the way. Now, we're going to remove the tape. I'm only going to remove one side. I can undo the rest as I go, but I'm going to hold the window.

Safety glasses are a good idea for this in case the window happens to go down a little faster than what you were expecting and glass does what glass does when it hits something hard. Just going to bring it down nice and slow. I'm in my grooves. It's not going to go anywhere now. Now, I can tighten up my 10mm here, my 10mm over here.

Oops. It's bottomed out. Give it a little bit. Go over here, do the same thing. Bottomed out. Give it a little bit. I'm going to try it one more time now that the window is on there. Get this tape off of here. Comes off nice and easy. If you used a different type of tape, maybe it wouldn't have. I'm going to try going all the way down. That looks good, and go up. Very nice. Now, just because I'm working inside here and I don't know if I'm locking the door or unlocking it, I'm going to make sure the window is down. I'll even put down the passenger side at the same time. Get this disconnected again. Let's get this set up. I'm just going to bring it over, get everything lined up the way that it needs to go.

Just going to get it in the hole. There it is. Now, a little cable here. I'm just going to come along here, get all of this lined up. Cool. Grab our speaker. Plugs right in right there, so we know that the electrical part faces down. I'm just going to connect it in. Put it up where it needs to go. Four screws. Just get it started. We don't want to tighten any of them down until they're all started just in case you have to move the speaker around a little bit. Got all four started. Now, we can go ahead and snug them right up.

Couple of spots would be nice if they stuck a little better, but not much we can do about that. We're going to get this back on. When we removed it, we had to go counterclockwise, so to reinstall it, we're going to go clockwise. Just try to get everything so they're lined up and ready to go on, and then we'll just latch it in by turning it clockwise. Looks pretty good. Give it a nice bonk. Bonk, bonk. That's my thing. Looks good. Cool.

Let's grab our door panel. Door handle, pull it through. On the door panel itself, there's a little hook like this, sits right along this ridge, so to install it you're just going to set it up on there. Push it down and grab our wiring. There should be a nice long one under here. That's going to come down over this way. Cool. This, this, this goes up here. It's for our mirror, mirror switch. Nice. I'm just going to get this set in. We can grab our Torx 15, or our T15, and that whole stack of screws we had there. Just grab some of them before we get some of these and start on one side, work your way around.

All the screws are in. No extra screws, that's nice. Over here, more like that. Get this right here. It goes that way, obviously. That's just going to come right down along the bottom. This piece right here, it's going to press into that hole, but I'm not going to do that yet until I do this, right over like that. I'll get this plugged in. Oops. Just push that through. No big deal. Unlocked. Cool. That in there. Grab this, we'll latch this in. Everybody is in. Get it lined up just like that. Couple of loving bonks. We've got our Phillips head, it's going to go in the topple.

You can use a bit driver or a 1/4 inch. This bottom one in. Feels good. Get this in here. Got a little tab, goes up in there, and then this slides in. Looking good. We've got one more screw. It's the T15, same thing we used for the door panel screws. Go right in. That's going to hold this in nice. There we are. Little cover, just going to pop it in there. There we are. Looks good. Grab our mirror switch assembly. Remember it has the little hooks right here, so they're going to grab on in this direction and it has a little push pin right here, and that one presses into the door panel. We'll connect it in first, of course.

There we are. Just push that back in if it pops out. No big deal. Should just pop in. I'm going to do these hooks first. Just want to get those lined up. Now, I'm going to bonk this in, just like that. Let's give everything a try. Mirror, mirror works. Very nice. Try the door. Here we go. Try locking it. Oh yeah, because it unlocks automatically with the handle. I'm like, "Well." It's locked. Feels good. Unlock. Cool.

That's all done. Let's clean up our mess and off we go. Easy peasy.

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