Rattling Loose Windows in Your Car How to Diagnose Window Regulator

Oh, looks like we're gonna have to figure this out.

Hey, friends, it's Len here from 1A Auto. Today, we've got a car in the shop and we're having an issue with one of the windows. What we've kind of noticed is as you're driving it down the road, we get this strange rattling noise. Okay. So, real quick, what I want to mention is on our vehicle that we have inside the studio, we have a manual crank window, which essentially means I have to grab onto this thing to make the window go up or even down. A lot of times on newer vehicles, what you're gonna find is they have electrical, well, pretty much everything inside of them, the windows, pretty basic. For us, we have this. So, I'm gonna show you how to get it apart. What we need to do first is to, of course, get this door panel off of here. To do that, if you have a manual crank window like this, you're going to have to go ahead and remove the clip that's underneath there. I'm just going to use a little pick and I'm going to come underneath and I'm going to try to grab onto one of the ears. Once I have this off, I'll show you what it looks like. There we are.

Now that that's off of here, we need to talk about mounting bolts. Typically, there's going to be some bolts that are going to hold the door panel to the actual door itself. Generally, you're going to find it inside of a grab handle, somewhere right along here. Typically, behind this handle right here, you're going to find a little trap door with another one. And there might even be some more located around the bottom or even along the sides of the door panel. Typically, if you don't see any bolts going around the side panel like this, that generally means that you're just going to go ahead and pry this off of there. If you can grab by your fingers or maybe even a nice plastic trim tool that looks like this, can wedge it in there and just kind of break it free. We're going to go around the whole door panel and get this right off of here. Behind that panel, you're going to have a vapor barrier. Go ahead and peel that out of the way as well so we have a nice, clear view of where our window regulator is going to be.

So, now the next thing that we want to do is just test to see what's actually going on with this window regulator while we have a nice, wide-open view. Just gonna go ahead and grab onto the window and I'm going to carefully shake it around. Essentially, what I want to be paying attention to is the areas on the metal parts, where the window regulator is and see how much movement they have. As you can tell, this has quite a bit of movement. I can lift the window up and down without even moving the handle right here. That's telling me that there's definitely an issue. So, now we're going around that window. What we want to pay attention to is the area where the window connects onto the metal part of the window regulator. Make sure that that bolt right there is tight. You're going to notice that there's a second one typically behind the door someplace, but if there's one, there's going to be a second. You also want to pay attention to the areas where the pivot points are and just see if it looks as though there's a lot of movement. A teeny bit like that is very normal. This looks good. After this, what we'd want to do is, of course, check the channels themselves. We want to make sure that the channels aren't loose in any way. You can usually grab onto them, give them a nice wiggle. Typically, they might have a mounting bolt or something like that that might hold them in their place. If that mounting bolt got loose or came off, then, of course, the channel could move, in which case, you'd probably have a lot of wiggle with your window as well.

So, now, typically, what I would want to do is stick something behind there, either a mirror or maybe even your cell phone, take a little video, but essentially take a peek at what's going on back there. And, of course, you can carefully move this crank. You just want to be careful not to lower it down on yourself in case of any pinch points. As I do this, what I want to do is pay attention to see what's moving back there. Typically, if you've got movement like this, you're not going to see the big cog that's behind there moving because that's obviously part of the window regulator. Okay. So, now let's just pay attention to the handle as we go ahead and grab onto the window and start lifting it up and down. This window moves up and down a lot before the handle even moves a tiny bit. This is telling me that there's an issue with the window regulator, especially where I can see the window regulator right here moving up and down but the handle is not.

Okay, friends, so this was a super easy diagnosis. We just went ahead and took off that door panel. We saw what was going on behind there. I used a cell phone, honestly, I can get back there nice and easy and see exactly what's happening. This came down to we're going to have to replace the window regulator. Hopefully, you learned a little something along the way. I know I did. I've got a job to do. I'm going to get right to it. If you like the video, smash on the like button for me, it would the world. While you're at it, subscribe, ring the bell, that way there you can be kept up with all of our latest content. Thanks.