What to look for on a slow moving power window. The window is aligned properly. Is rusted rollers the main culprit? Wanted to order parts before removing window regulator.

 

Have you opened the door panel and checked for dried out grease in the tracks?

 

Just did one side. First thing I did when I got the car.

90% with old cars , it’s old grease and gunk. The tracks, the rollers, the grease in the motors.

For what it’s worth, do the whole thing once.

pull the glass, take the tracks out, pull the motor. You are in there anyway.

I use brake clean on everything to dissolve the gunk. Anything that fits in my electronic cleaner went in.

As for the motor, I was really gunked. I always use a lil brass dremel bit on any oxidized electrical tabs. Comes nice n shiny.

Once everything’s out, I clean the inside of the door as now’s your chance.

In a perfect world, replace all the worn plastic rollers.

Im my case just really cleaning then Fixed them 80%.

once it’s all put back in, I noticed my windows are insanely fast.

 

The Old grease can be readily removed with a little extra heat applied to it to soften it up. I use a Hot Air gun and heat up the general area and then wipe the old grease off the parts and clean them up. The old grease on my 1968 was hard and very difficult to remove without heating it up.

The power that drives the window motor goes through the switch in the center console. As these switches age and get corrosion on them the speed of the window motor might slow down. The idea to run the power through the switch was not the best. They should have used a relay in between.

The point is simple, NEWER switches should make the motor faster as they are getting all the power with no corrosion in the way.

The windows on my C3 operate at a very fast rate and the window drops down easily. The motor works a bit harder to get the window back up in place. The drivers door window goes up and down more faster and more easily than the passengers side. I suspect the drivers side gets more wear and tear even though I normally cruise with windows down or I don't cruise at all.

I tried a material called DeOXit and it is awesome at removing corrosion on brass and copper terminals. This stuff can remove the corrosion down to the base metal and leaves a protective layer to keep it from re-corroding. You can actually renovate the contacts inside of a relay using DeOXit! I used it on one side of the rear lights on my C3 and it made such a difference that my running lights were almost as bright as the brake lights. When you looked at the rear of the car it was a huge difference between the two sides of the rear lights.

DeOXit will clean the contacts in your door window switches to allow full power to get through. I have been using it on every electrical connection that I touch or work on.

Just for fun measure the voltage at the window motor and see if it is getting a full 12 volts to it.

 

I’ll open it up tonight and check.

 

Yep, the culprit is the old grease in the entire system from tracks to motors. The replacement roller sets are all you need to buy (pretty much guaranteed your axle plastics are broken).

My '72's passenger window would barely raise and sometimes just stopped 1/2 way up; driver's was better but not great. After complete disassembly, new rollers, new grease, re-oiled motor bushings, they work very quickly now.

Be aware of the safety precautions for dealing with the regulator spring if you do decide to remove the tracks and such. Also, realigning the glass is a royal pain, but all in all it's a very worthwhile and satisfying job.

 

Thanks to all that responded, I got lucky and didn’t have to pull out the window regulator for now. After removing the door panel and taking off the access panel to get access to the wheels and track I sprayed some
pb blaster and let it soak and then cleaned out and re applied grease. Wow working one hundred times better. I live in the northern climate and I’ll tackle taking out the regulators and reconditioning both sides after I put it up for the winter.
thanks again.