There are kits that can be purchased for this conversion, but the simple
matter is that I'm just too cheap to shell out the $350 to buy one. Of
course the good thing about one of the kits is that all of the parts are
new. But hey, I love a challenge!
I turned Snarfy (my parts dog) loose in one of the junk yards and what he found was that the regulator and motor from a 70 Olds Vista Cruiser (front windows) looked like they could be modified to fit. Keep in mind that even Snarfy couldn't locate the rare factory units! The units, with motors, only cost $28 per door! He also located the required switches for the doors. A double switch for the drivers door and a single switch for the shotgun door.
I checked the fact that the motors worked and also checked the switches.
The arm on the power regulator would have to be modified due to it's shorter length. Plus the angle was different. The simplest solution was to cut off the arm of the original unit and weld it onto the power unit.
Here is the old arm, welded on the power unit.
The next thing was to figure out where the new new holes would have to be drilled in the door panel for bolting in the power unit. I took measurements off of both the original unit and the power unit. All of the measurements have to be referenced to the pivot point (where the spring is)! I then transferred the measurements to the door panel such that the pivot point was in the original location.
And there it is, all bolted in place!
Caution;
There are several configurations of power window mechanisms! Some have the motors up, and some have the motors down. The real reason for the caution here is that there are also different "driven" gear sizes. This is a function of the regulators arm and the weight of the window.
If the driven gear is smaller, the window will go up faster due to the motors running at a constant speed. The longer the arm, the faster the window will go up.
It ends up that the windows go up and down a little faster than I would like. I'm going to live with it for the time being.
The option would have been to use the rear door mechanisms which had the larger gearing. I would have had to swap them side for side in order to get the motors pointing downward. The potential problem here is that the motor is farther from the springed pivot point and may be too close to the factory location of the control switch. Potentially a real problem if the switches are wired with a constant 12 volts as in a "factory" wiring job.
go to part 3 Boots and wires to the doors
go to part 4 Wiring the relay assembly
go to part 5 Making the door panels
return to "tech reference" index page