What NOT to Do When Replacing a Window Regulator

Brought to you by 1AAuto.com your source for quality replacement parts and the best service on the internet.

Hi, I'm Mike Green. I'm one of the owners of 1A Auto. I want to help you save time and money repairing or maintaining your vehicle. I'm going to use my 20-plus years experience restoring and repairing cars and trucks like this to show you the correct way to install parts from 1AAuto.com. The right parts, installed correctly that's going to save you time and money. Thank you and enjoy the video.

You want to replace the power window motor on a cable style regulator. Say you happen to be watching my video, but you kind of miss the part where I say, Make sure that the wheel doesn't come out of the transmission case. What I'm going to do is, basically, I'm going to break this regulator. I actually already have. I'm going to show you what happens when the wheel pops out and how to get it back in.

Here's a regulator that's actually out of a '99 to '06 GMC pickup. It's the twin cable style regulator, typical of many newer cars as people are trying to save weight. I'm just going to put it down here.

The first thing is, just going to kind of pull this motor off. This is an aftermarket regulator that I have. I didn't have access to a new regulator or an OEM regulator to break. Our aftermarket manufacturer actually improved this regulator so that you can, if you needed to, you could replace the window motor without everything flying apart. But that's irrelevant. Basically, you happen to take it apart and let's see here and, oops, the wheel comes out and everything's flying, everything is all over the place. What you want to do is you want to first flip this side over. Get the motor out of the way.

Now you're looking at the regulator and you've got your this is the bracket side. Bracket's up on top on the left. This is your transmission casing, for lack of a better word. Put it down like that. You can see these cables should go into it like that. When this gear goes into this case, you want this star showing. But you actually, when you start doing this, first you want to get everything just kind of neatened up here. You've got your long cable coming from this side, and your shorter cable coming from that side. Then what you can do is flip this over. Then start so I've got this flipped over. The star side is no longer up. I've got that pole up.

Then I'm going to wind the longer cable around first, going step by step. I'm going to that looks pretty good going groove by groove. You can see there's a bunch of dirt on this thing too. You don't want to have a bunch of dirt in there. I'm not planning on using this regulator again so I didn't clean it up too much, just to save some time. You bring it there. Then you wind this one you bring it up there so then you can hold this guy right there with your other finger. Then you wind this one the opposite way, making sure then you have them both right there.

Keep in mind, also all my other pulleys, the cable was properly routed. You want to make sure the cable otherwise is properly rerouted.
Get this case like that. Then you flip it over and put your thumb not as smooth as I'd hope. Put your thumb right there. Now you can see that it's all ready basically to go together, but how in the world do you get this tight enough? That's there the trick is. Let's just make sure all those cables are in the proper grooves.

What you do is, see how this has a little oblong tooth on it? That's your tightening tool. What you do is you take this cable off and what I'm doing is the same time I'm taking that off, I'm kind of pushing on there to keep some tension on the wheel. So I'm pushing with my thumb that way, taking this cable off of here, so now I have some looseness in the cable, and I can get this in here first.

Now you see I've got that side in. It's not the easiest thing to do here. Let's see, it's still show it. I'm going to switch hands, keeping my thumb on the cable there. Then I'm going to pull this side in. Give everything a little bit of a tug. Then put the wheel down in. Now you're in, but you're loose. Now all's you do is position this up right about there. Take this cable what happens is, when you push up, this side here will bottom out. So this side won't move anymore, so now you can pull up with this. It shouldn't come out of there I'm not too worried about it. Push this up and over. So you see that's just kind of around that oblong here.

Hold this in and just start pulling this down, and you can see it just guides itself right on to that pole. Now you're back in business. You've got your play back in here. Take this and flip it back over. Now you're ready to bolt this back on. You can see that now everything's moving together. I'm going to pull on this one, and you'll see that one goes up the same, which is what you want. So everything's in sync. Now just carefully put everything back together, and don't let that wheel out again.

I hope I helped you out with that. One disclaimer like I said, this is an aftermarket design regulator, so I'm not 100% sure I'd have to take the regulator out of our truck to make sure it's the exact same but I would imagine that the principles of putting it together are about the same.
Just another reminder is that if you run into some trouble, if you're replacing your power window motor and you end up breaking your power window regulator, remember we at 1A Auto, we have a good return policy. As long as that power window motor is still new, you can send that back to us and we'll send you out a regulator. Just pay the difference in cost. Hope that helped you out. Thank you very much.

We hope this helps you out. This video was brought to you by www.1AAuto.com, your source for quality replacement parts and the best service on the internet. Call us toll-free, 888-844-3393. We're the company that's here for you on the internet and in person. Thank you very much.