What did you find wron this time? I was just about to order the part for my window. I quess I hold on to it untill I hear from you.

 

Waiting with anticipation here as I have a rear window not operating on a 96 A4 Sedan.
Looks like electrical problem at this end?

 

Haha sorry for not replying quickly, I was out of town the last few days for work. FInally got a chance to tear the door apart and look again.

At this point I'm not 100% sure what is happening. I feel something else is causing my window regulators to fail. I tore apart the door again and found that the lower left wire had jumped out of its sheave and, similar to the first regulator, the main sheave wires got tangled around the motor and got all eaten up.

I inspected the slot that the window itself rides in and there was a slight kink in the slot. I haven't fully determined if that is enough to stall the window as it moved up/down and cause the regulator to go out of wack but it is definitely on my mind.

I'm going to call up ECS Tuning tonight after work and have a word with a tech. They we're really nice when I had a different issue so I'm wondering if they can point me in the right direction.

If anyone is still paying attention to this thread, I'll post something later tonight.

Cheers
-Jago

 

Got off the phone with ECS and as far as we could determine the OEM and cheap regulators are identical except for the colors on the sliders are indeed reversed. Build quality is still a question. I took another chance and ordered a second cheap one. When I install it this time I'm gonna make absolutely sure that it fits perfect and is no different than the OEM.

My guess is that kink I saw was problem, hopefully I can fix that.

I'd rather tear up another $40 regulator than **** up a $150 OEM one because of a silly kink in the rail.

I'll post a few pics when I do. Maybe you guys can see the problem that I might be missing.

-Jago

 

Alright well I have a little bit of a follow up.

So I go the second window regulator (another cheap one from ECS Tuning). I disassembled my door again, this time I took a bit more time to look at everything and make sure every thing went together better.

There were a couple of things I did notice: In my haste to put the window together the first time, it appeared that I hadn't properly fit the window into the right weather stripping groove. I don't believe that it somehow jumped out of the groove, I think it was something I messed up on. There was also a small dent in the groove where the window slides so I very carefully tapped it back into shape with a plastic mallet.

One thing I did differently is when I was attaching the window to the new regulator, I made sure NOT to torque down the screws so tight (I read in my Haynes manual to put the screws on loose, then move the window up into the frame, then I put a little more torque on them.) It seemed that if I had the screws tight, it became really difficult to move the window up and down by hand in the window frame, so I left them a little looser than I normally torque screws.

Its been a week, lets hope the window regulator is done and I don't have to take the door apart again!

Embarrassingly though, the 2nd to last time I took the door apart, I just ripped the blue plastic part of the regulator off to disable the window entirely so that I wouldn't accidentally hit the window and screw up the motor the last time the regulator went. It seems I left that part inside the door so it rattles around a little bit... DOH!

-Jago

 

3 weeks. 3 fracking weeks and the damn regulator went again. I pretty much am out of ideas. I don't know what I am doing wrong. I think I'm just going to take it and hope to christ I can have a warranty on the repair. This is getting pretty silly.