Upgrading window motors

The windows on my Mondi 8 (1981) were very slow to raise. I removed the door panels & give all the slides a liberal coating of Silicone lube spray,they now lower very quickly but are slower & smoother raising. I can send you the details if you think it would help.

 

I'll be interested to hear how you get on.
My windows are not up to modern standards but they are adequate.
When I 'de-gunked' the winding mechanism/spool I gave the motors a minor service. I saw enough of the motors to have doubts that the strength of the motor is the issue here.
The basic design (i.e. using cables) is the problem. Plenty of lubrication and optimum adjustment of the cables I think is the way ahead.

But as I said - I'll be interested to hear how you get on.

 

Hot Rodders do it all the time
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I completely rebuilt both of my Mondial door window lifts a few years ago and was very tempted to redesign the whole thing while I was at it. I'm glad I took a picture of the trapeze-like setup before hand otherwise I might have never gotten it back together.

 

Kelly, do a search in the archives on this one. Have not done it personally, but I do know there has been some success with re-wiring the motors directly to the batt and adding a relay to control the actuation - seems to help avoid some of the voltage drop and give the motors a bit more grunt. Good luck and persist!

 

Mine had the same problem - very slow going up almost to the point of NOT rising at all.

I took the entire assembly apart including the motor actuators and cleaned everything. The grease in the gears looks to be the biggest culprit. It hardens into a sticky wax-like paste over the years. I scraped it off every surface and every single gear tooth and relubed it with a modern Lithium grease, then re-assembled the system of cables and pulleys after regreasing all the pulleys. Now it goes MUCH faster. It's still not as fast as my Jeep or Mustang windows, but it's respectable.

Warning - The cables need to be wound around the actuator in exactly the same way as they were originally, which can be a trick if you don't pay attention to how it came apart and how it was wound. The second one I did slightly differently. I vice-gripped the cables together between some rubber to keep them wound around the actuator while I worked on everything else.
Thor
www.JavelinArt.com

 

i just did this service to a customers 83QV . after cleaning the cemet-like grease from the worm drive and winding the cable properly and cleaning /lubing and adjusting the the window alignment and cable tension [just tight enough to keep cable on spool in alignment ] the window goes down in about 4.5 sec and up in about 6 sec. this is the same koeo or koer . this all original . i would consider replaceing the fuse block,relays [all ],make sure all connections and grounds are good.i use stablinat 22a on all. this took me about 3 hours . forza

 

The t has worm drive flexible shafts instead of cables. Nothing to do there. I got inspired and simply replaced the rubber U-channel in front and back of the glass, and mine now work very well. Cost: $45 from GT Car Parts.

 

Yeah, Stabilant 22a is good stuff.
Not just a contact cleaner it acts to rebuild the contact surface. As the isopropanol evaporates it leaves a residue layer of a liquid polymer, a block polymer stabilant 22a itself, which helps to fill any gaps, pits or small irregularities which lead to poor connections.
Its not cheap though. DIY guys might gag on the price a bit. However it is worth the cost. A Stabilant 22a treated contact joint will match the connectivity of a soldered connection, which is very good news for 30 year old electric systems.
Yep, I'm a fan.

 

Although these windows will not be as fast as modern windows they can work well. As a test to see if this is a ground problem just pull the door speaker and reach in and disconnect the 2 wires for the window motors. Now just hot wire these 2 leads to a 12v source and see how fast the windows work. You'll find if the grease is cleaned out of the gearbox that the windows will work just fine. As to the suggestion of adapting "hot rod" type actuators it is a good idea but I have not found anyone who has made this conversion work. It would be great if someone did this and documented how it was done and what parts were used. Good luck.

 

I think Deoxit D5 is better. It first deoxidizes old contacts and then does the same thing as Stabilant. Not cheap either, but it comes in a spray can, so is a lot handier around the garage.

 

I recently had my drivers door window motor serviced , clean all the old grease, replaced with new stronger motor. For better operating, I add the window accelerator module, from Ricambia works great.

 

Anyone have a set of old working motors? I would like to buy them if you do.

 

Cleaning and adjusting the assembly properly AND adding the relay "black boxes" will make the factory design work as well as any new car vs. putting in something completely new and different (meaning more work IMO). However, if the "lifting cable" is frayed from use over the years no amount of amperage will overcome it. I made the mistake of going to a slightly larger diameter cable (back in '95 .. first repair ) and I think I get a bit of bind in the spool and pulleys on the driver side ... goes up plenty fast but the built in circuit breaker trips. The passenger side will take your arm off with the engine off though .


cheers

 

I've got my original working window motor set (2) from my 77 GTB if those interest you. PM me?

Thanks,
Greg

 

There is a down side to turbocharging windows. After I did the full relay modification which resulted in 2-3 second window speed, I starting blowing fuses.

You may not realize that there is no build-in 'end-of-travel' stops. When the window reaches it's final stopping place, the motor still has full power, the current spikes and overcurrent devices cutout causing voltage to be turned off. But not before there is great violence to the cable and pulleys.

Forces in down direction are worse than up as window weight helps accelerate the downward speed. Taming this situation required using a limit switch to stop the motor in the down direction. This civilized the downward direction and ended that resultant current spike.

For the up direction, where I found no practical limit switch mounting, I resorted to spring loading the cable at the adjustment pulley. Videos are on the web describing this solution. And I still fear the cables breaking.

Heed, my children, for unbridled horsepower in the wrong hands can be fraught with danger.

 

I'm trying to tell you all. None of that gizmodery is needed. Let's consider this from a common sense point of view: when the car was new did the windows work? Yes, I would imagine that they did. So, what has changed between then and now? I'll tell you: the rubber U-channels in the guides have worn out. That is what has changed more than anything. I may be totally full of it, but I do know this: All I did was replace the rubber, set the alignment as best I could, and apply DeOxit D5 to all the connectors. Now, my windows work just fine. No issues at all. They go up. They go down. At a speed neither dangerous nor embarrassing. Word.

P.S. The place to buy the rubber is G. T. Car Parts. They are very nice people who seem to be swamped with work so their attention to small-timers like me is pretty spotty, (or maybe it's just me but persevere and you save a lot of money - I paid $45 for enough U-channel to do all four windows. Haven't done the rears on my Mondial yet, but I will. Thing is the U-Channel they sold me, while not precisely the same as the original, seemed like a better design. Once it's installed, it looks the same, and it sure fixed my winders.

 

My windows are slow but I have been told by a lot of people that all you have to do is clean out the gunk in the window guides and they will work fine.... I will try that first I guess.

 

I cleaned mine out - it helped a little, but the big improvement came from the new rubber.

 

There was a factory circuit breaker mounted on the window motor on my car which will trip on the way up on the driver's side sometimes. Passenger side it never trips and I've never blow a fuse.

Anyway you could mount a circuit breaker in line that resets itself automatically to solve the fuse problem.

I agree you can get the factory system to work pretty good, but I got tired of fiddling/adjusting and constantly lubing everything ... more power .


cheers