Window cable adjustment

Window cables are indeed only spoken of in hushed tones !! :O (such is the fear of them!)









(Do a search, I do recall seeing some threads - one on a Testarossa I think)

 

You shouldn't be able to lift the cable off any of the pulleys, at least not easily. It needn't be guitar string tight, either.

Too loose can cause window crash, as in window suddenly crashes to bottom of the door, as the cable comes off the pulley. One of mine was too loose many years ago after someone worked on the door,and that happened to me.

Doug

 

+1, it can also cause the window to jam as it can tilt forward or back. They are no mystery - and every Fiat in the 70's and early 80's had the very same setup (although mostly manual). I always set mine to be nice and tight (but obviously not too tight).

Lee

'77 GT4

 

Yea, right now my 308GTB's driver window is canted forward as one of the cable-glass attachments has given way. :-|

 

I may have gone overboard, but I added springs to the idler pulley as well as adding relays to increase the voltage to the windows.

View the video (1mb). Note the obvious point the idler was originally secured at and note the difference between up and down cable slack taken up by the spring.

This goes back some years when we had window races.

http://www.ferrari308gtbi.com/windo.wmv​

Now then, what was the question?
_____________________

 

Wow...wish mine were that fast. As I recall when I was in my door doing work, I played with the cable tention while working the window up and down until I found a tention that seem to work well. I don't recall just how tight I had it though. One thing I do remember is that I used a direct 12vdc power source to the motor while doing this and "shazzam" those windows will fly up and down. Then when you go back to the standard wiring in the car with the switches you get the dredded slowa$$ windows again. Joe

 

Can anyone explain why there is any difference in the cable tension, and why Paul's pulley moves so much? Mine does not do this and goes almost as fast.

 

The tensioner pulley is on the down side leg of the cable, the pulley is on slack side during raising and under tension during lowering causing the spring to stretch.

The downside to this is, during lowering of the window, the cable is way slack on the forward most lower pulley and has the potential to slip off. I would add a stop bolt perhaps 2-3 mm under the spring loaded pulley so that it cannot be drawn down so far on the adjuster arm during lowering.

Doug

 

I stayed up all night until it dawned on me.

Visualize one section of the cable where stretched between two pulleys. However, the windows path is not exactly the same angle as the natural cable path between pulleys. The window must attach to that cable but since it's path is slightly different, the window takes the cable slightly off course. In this drawing, when window is up, the window attach point is nearer the top pulley causing the deviation from straight natural path to be small. When window is down, and the window attach point is nearer the bottom pulley, the cable is taken slightly off its would-be course. When deviation is greater, total cable path is longer. Cable length is shorter when the window is up, longer when down.

Not a great amount of length difference but noticeable and compensated for by allowing the idler to make up the difference.
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..... while adjusting my cables (actually had to make new cables) I always put some rags in the bottom of the door as a cushion in case the glass falls. There is some rubber tabs in there but who says they are enough especially if the glass does not fall level or aligned in the track.

Another thing to check is the lubricant inside the winder gearbox ........ the stuff in mine was extremely hard , not really lubricant more like candle wax.

I replaced it with Castrol SL (Self Leveling) grease and they now wind up and down quite quick with no problems.

Check the material in the window track too , , it's mentioned is some recent threads.

 

Anyone knows how to remove the side windows on the Mondial so that the U-section window track gaskets can be changed?
Mine are old, hard and partially ripped, not helping window speed either.
By the way, the Mondial has got a spring loaded idler pulley, and it moves quite a bit.

 

The rubber tabs, two per door, on mine were smashed flat. I found better ones at the hardware store and replacement required drilling larger holes in the bracket for the rubber tit.

For the window to stop at the end of it's down journey, the window must actually hit these rubber stops and the resulting overcurrent in the motor opens an internal circuit breaker. So the force against these stops can be considerable especially when increasing the window motor's torque by increasing the voltage with a relay(s).

Just recalled that I did place micro-switches at the bottom to open the voltage path to the motor when the windows reach the stops. You can hear the difference in the video. The motor clunks at it's upward stop but simply stops at the bottom when the switch opens up.