As a result of being heavy-handed, and not taking the thing apart and lubing it properly, the window crank on the driver side stopped working. After dragging out Rod's manual (God, I hate trying to find something in there), I disassembled the door enough to notice that the top riser cable to the mechanism had broken. I'm about to yank the whole thing to see if I can reconnect it, but was wondering if anyone knows if the cable can be replaced by itself, or might I be stuck with having to procure an entire new mechanism.
I went through this not too long ago. My car has power windows, but I believe the mechanism is the same. I posted a summary on this newsgroup. Here it is again with the hope that it will help. Just ignore the "motor" parts. I did try to find a local bicycle or motorcycle shop that could fix the cable, but was not able to do so in short order. So I fixed it myself. So far: so good.
Good luck with it.
Ken
Today's task was to fix the power window in the '90B that failed yesterday. It went about half way down and that was all she wrote.
As the affectionatos know: there is a differential cable system that pulls the window up or down. You get to either crank it manually or, as in my case, a motor does the cranking for you. The cables terminate on a "drum" such that as one is extended, one is retracted. Simple arrangement and it served me well for about 168K miles.
What happened is that the cable termination at the window lift mechanism came free. My attempts to put the window back up caused the now loose cable to wrap around the drum and jam the mechanism. The motor, sensing this resistance, went into the same mode it goes into when you reach either the "up" or "down" limit: it shuts down.
Once I got everything apart, I seemed to have about three choices:
Buy a new lift mechanism from the good folks at Trussville for about eighty something dollars
Find someone to fix the end
Fix it myself
A local motorcycle shop gave me the name of a company here in the SF Bay area that makes custom cables. That means it doesn't get done today and, possibly, I may have been better off just buying the new part. Of course, today is Saturday, which means local sources of help might not be available.
I have no idea what "brazing" is, but it sounded like a possibility. I bought some brazing rods and turned the propane torch on it to see what it would do. Interestingly enough, it got hot and melted. That's a good start! I took the end of the disconnected cable that I pulled out of it's sheath and cut off the end that used to be anchored in the termination. I had to do this to get it through the sheath once again. That was easy and I figured that normal stretching and tolerances in the system should allow me to cut off a few millimeters with no serious problems.
Once I threaded the required plastic pieces back on the cable, I heated up the brazing rod till it was near that point of being liquid and also turned the torch on the end of the cable that needed a termination. I kept the heat going as I formed a big blob of whatever the brazing rod material is on the end of the cable. Not too big, as it needs to fit into the plastic piece that connects the "up" and "down" cable ends together. This was successful. Sort of round end vs. the OEM cylindrical end; we shall see if it is a problem or not.
Put it all back together and ran the window up and down a bunch of times. Looks like a winner, folks!
A couple of hints for those who might try this at home:
If you take the motor apart, be prepared to have to deal with getting the brushes back together again. It's like humpty dumpty. I've done motors for years and knew it was coming. My solution was to put the brushes and springs back in, one at a time, and hold them in place with a piece of metal tape over the top of the assembly. Once the armature is re-assembled (it's a DC motor with magnets...oooh boy...fun, fun, fun) you remove the tape and ensure the brushes are making contact. Brush wear, by the way, seemed modest. I suspect the motors will go another couple of hundred thousand miles at this rate.
To wind the cable on the plastic drum, it is a good idea to take up the cable slack. I made a simple wood strip with key slots that went over the cables to compress the tension springs at the motor body and held this in place with a woodworking clamp. I had to redo this a few times to really take up the slack and slightly reposition the lift mechanism to get the square hole in the drum to align with the square drive axle.
The owner's manual didn't cover any of this stuff. It did, however, suggest removal of the rubberized weather strip that is on the exterior side of the glass. It seemed like a fool's errand, so I left it in place and carefully worked around it when putting the glass back in. Seems ok for now; no real damage that I can see.
Pretty much all of this didn't go as smoothly as I would lead you to believe. Meditation exercises or outright swearing will be required. Whatever works for you.
I had actually found enough information to attempt the repair and was about to do so. Cold weather and no grarage kept me from doing it, and after reading your response, I'm glad it worked out that way. You not only verified everything I'd found (primarily on miata.net), but added suggestions that will certainly make the job quite a bit easier, such as rewinding the cable on the drum.
Again, thanks. I'll be printing your response before attempting the fix.
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