'89 GL 3-door Coupe Power Windows

OK, once again I am crossing due to the wealth of knowledge available across the boards...

My '89 Suby 3-dr coupe's passenger side window would not work. I know when I looked at the car, the pass window would go DOWN from the driver's side, but not up. From the passenger's side, it would work.

I got the car here last week, and just went to lok at it today. No Go on the pass side window, from either side. I took the panel off, and the regulator had been removed from the door and was just flopping, and the window was held up by a piece of wood.

I set everything back normal...No Go. After some quick troubleshooting with a meter, I found voltage going to the switch, but not FROM the switch, and no ground.

I made an educated guess that the white wire with the black stripe was ground, ran a jumper from that point to the door frame, et voila...window goes up and down from the passenger's side of the car. But not so from the driver's side. There is no operation whatsoever from the driver's side switch.

I have a suspicion that the white/black wire is still the culprit. Can someone give me an idea what I'm looking for here...

Reply to
Hachiroku
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What happens when you bypass the switch and short the wires directly on the driver side

Reply to
EdV

I haven't removed the driver's side panel yet. By the time I got it working on the pass. side it was time to give up and go to bed, so I'm going to have a look at the other side today.

Basically, I was wondering if anyone had encountered this before, like a common thing, or if there are any 'peculiarities' I should be aware of! ;)

Reply to
Hachiroku

I guess I should clarify my question a bit. What I'm lacking in understanding is, how does the driver's side switch control the passenger's side window? It doesn't appear to be a direct connection to the motor, so it has to go to the switch.

On the pass side switch, there are 5 wires: Red/Pink,+12V; White/blk, GND; Blue/Cyan,(down or up); Blue/GRN (down or up); and another blue wire. I'll have to take a better look; I was concentrating on just getting the thing put back together and working yesterday. But it seems to me that the unaccounted for blue wire must be the Down from the driver's switch, and that the Up connection is missing...

Reply to
Hachiroku

If it is a factory fit then in the wiring harness there will be wires that run from the drivers side to the passenger side that splice into the up/down wires. If they are aftermarket it may not be connected at all(seems that way by the wiring you suggested), but if it is there will be a splice into the up/down wires somewhere along the line. The extra blue wire is most likely meant to be hooked up to the dash light circuit to make the switch light up.

FYI the switches work by earthing out both up/down wires then when you push the switch it disconnects the earth from one wire and connects it to power. In a master-slave situation the slave switch up/down wires are earthed back to the master switch so that when the master switch is working it sends the power through the slave switch then to the motor.

Power Power _____________ | __________________ | / \ | / \ | Motor Slave Master___ Earth \______________/ | \__________________/ | | | Light Light

Reply to
Nick Bourne

Nice drawing! Makes it clearer. I'll check it out later if it doesn't hit over 100 degrees again today...if not, Friday is supposed to be in the mid-70's (makes working outside SO much nicer!)

Earth, eh? In 1976 I had a Volvo 1800ES 'estate wagon', based on the p1800E sports car. Cool little wagon.

The Tach said "Smiths" above the needle mount and "Negative Earth" below it. It wasn't until a couple years later when I went to Electronics school that it finally hit me it meant Negative GROUND!

But I thought it was so cool that we named our band Negative Earth...

Reply to
Hachiroku

Sorry I come from the criminal colonies were the British taught us to speak. I think it comes from the original DC power grid where you got one wire in and 6 foot steel rod driven into the earth out the back. I can't get my head around the whole AC wiring thing of active and neutral. If you touch either it give you a shock, can't see what's so neutral about it.

Reply to
Nick Bourne

One note - the slave switch is supposed to put both lines through to the traveler wires to the Master switch except when it's being thrown, so the master switch can run the window. If you have a "Window War" between the passenger and driver the slave switch will win, because it's closer to the motor.

If it's built right, over here they bond the neutral wires and the safety earth ground wires at the power service panel on the house. Sometimes it's all one large bussbar in the service panel.

You can't get shocked on the neutral IF it's properly connected, there's maybe two to five volts there above ground, due to wire resistance.

Now if you open the neutral wire and still have a load connected at the far end, the 120V or 240V power coming back through the neutral trying to find it's way back to the panel is there to bite you...

Over there in Oz, all bets are off. There are many ways to wire up power systems that have no earthed conductors, and there are people who claim leaving it floating is safer... (And I am not one of them.)

-->--

Reply to
Bruce L. Bergman

I was in electronics for 19 years...

I don't get it either...

Reply to
Hachiroku

I'm not sure how wiring standards are there, but here in Yank-land the modern standard uses three wires for single phase (120 volt) wiring. Only one, the "hot" lead (I think there's a formal name for it but it isn't coming to mind), will produce a shock under normal conditions. The other two, neutral and ground (safety ground), are connected together at the power distribution point - in homes and similar, that's the circuit breaker panel. The current in the hot and neutral wires must balance; ground current indicates a fault.

It is never wise to bet one's life on it, though. At work we recently began auditing the low voltage wiring in our substations (I work for an electric utility) and found some amazing sorts of miswiring. And recently my wife and I stayed in a hotel room (a mid-scale chain hotel) where turning on the hall light tripped the GFI breaker in the bathroom. Hmm....

Mike

Reply to
Michael Pardee

I'm not sure exactly how its wired here most of our houses have an earth pole and two wires going out to the pole for single phase power, but it seems kind of strange to have the earth hooked up to the neutral. We run 240v so it might be different. what the point of the earth if its connected to the neutral. it seems to me that it is a possible way of getting zapped if any other appliance in the house is on. All I definitely know is that we only fuse the active (Any scientific instrument I have seen built in the states has a link across the second fuse), and even if the power point is turn off you will still get zapped if you stuck anything in it.

Reply to
Nick Bourne

That would be different. 240 is what we call two-phase here but I suspect we wire it differently. Our 240 is four wire: two "hot" phases, a neutral that is 120V to either phase and at ground potential, and a safety ground. The safety ground is what is normally expected to prevent shock from touching appliances, although smaller devices (like power tools) are typically just insulated from ground. (The standard is "double-insulated" but I don't see what protects the user if both insulations fail.)

I confess I don't know anything about power standards outside the US.

Mike

Reply to
Michael Pardee

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