This is on my '90 Coupe.

Here's the problem. And it just happened out of the blue.

Neither window is operative with either switch.

Although once in a great while if I hit either switch, the window coinciding with that switch will go down about a quarter inch.

But then I can't get them back up because nothing happens when I hit the switches after that.

I did manage to get the LH side window back up when the LH side master switch decided to work for a second.

The 30 amp circuit breaker for the power windows in the fuse box gets really hot to the touch after hitting the switches a few times.

The RH side window is still down about a half inch and won't go back up.

Both switches, the master LH side switch as well as the RH switch were just replaced.

They're both good.

The LH side window motor was replaced a few months ago, if even that long ago.

The RH side window motor was said to be replaced before I bought the car.

But the LH window whould still work regardless, I would think.

I really don't want to tear the dash apart to try to dig for some factory splice that the manual does not tell you where it is.

The grounds are simple enough to get to if I have to. Well...I know where they are, but you still have to rip the carpet and sill apart to get to them.


There doesn't seem to be much to the wiring of these windows according to the manual.

It does mention about checking circuits/circuit numbers.

That's like finding a needle in a haystack in the electrical manual the way that it is concocted and it doesn't really clearly illustrate circuits that it references in any way that I have seen. There's no circuit chart, so to speak.

I have these pdf manuals that came on a disc and I have never liked them at all.

Electrical isn't my thing, I need help with this if anyone can make sense of them. I can't when it comes to some aspects of it.

 

Well you guys are no darned good. Sheesh. lol.

I'm thinking it has to be a short some place. Or a ground just isn't in the condition thta it used to be.

The last time I messed with anything with the windows at all was when I replaced the LH side motor.

I'm thinking it's probably a short some place rather than an open circuit. Especially the way that circuit breaker is heating up.

Guess I'll pull the panel off and look for bad wires or breaks that may have occurred after I buttoned it all back up.

 

If the 30 amp breaker is getting hot I'd agree you have a dead short somewhere before the switch. I had such a situation with my power seats. I could actually hear the breaker tripping and resetting over and over and was hot to the touch because of that. My short was the hot wire running to the power seat switch had insulation rubbed off.

Hope your shorted wire is easy to find.

 

Yep, it's a short. A wire has rubbed somewhere and is touching ground. Could also be in the CB. Have you tried swapping it out as well?

 

The weather hasn't been cooperating here.

So that's pretty much why I started a thread asking about it on here.

Haven't been able to get out there and physically mess with it, so basically just spitballing and was looking for input from anyone with experience with it in the mean time.

I do think it's a short as well.

And, yes, I did swap out one of the other 30 amp circuit breakers and it get real hot real fast, too, so....yeah. Definitely leads to a short some place.

Really hoping that when I yank the LH side door panel that maybe I just pinched a wire in that specific area when I buttoned it back up.

Though the windows did work for a while after that. So that makes me wonder why it just started happening out of the blue.

Not really down for getting into the dash and tracing back from the fuse box.

If it comes to that, it'll definitely be a spring job.

But...in the mean time, I am getting the hang of learning how to read the electrical supplemental manual now after a few days of studying it and learning all of the symbols and how the ciircuits are laid out and whatnot.

That's something I've needed to do but just never have because...well...I dunno why other than defering to ''I'll just take it apart and look at it'' instead.

 

Well. Didn't do much with it today.

As far as I went with it...



Haven't checked G201.

Only way to get the sill cover out is to take the seat out and then take the e-brake trimp off....then take the sill cover out.

Guess I could pull the LH panel and look for an open on that ground circuit first.

Didn't feel like doing all of that crap today just to get to a darned ground to look at it. Dumb stuff...

 

I take the sill cover off all the time without touching the seat or the e-brake housing. It comes out in less than 2 minutes. The seat and e-brake stay in place.

I would begin at the driver side switch. Remove the arm rest panel with the switch in it and disconnect the switch. If the circuit breaker doesn't get hot with the switch disconnected, it is not the wire to the switch. Because all 4 motor wires rest at +12Volt, a short to ground on any of the 4 wires all the way to the motors could cause the breaker to get hot and trip. Even an internal short in a motor, although I don't think the motor housings or window regulator are "grounded". It's a plastic door.

Test for power and ground: Take a good load like a headlight bulb and connect it between the pink and black wires with the key in RUN. Light should light.

Take a look at this thread. It is less than 2 weeks old. I wrote several posts with "how to test" procedures. See if they help. I'm not going to write all of that again. (Ignore the references to Delayed Accessory Buss. Your 1990 doesn't have DAB. Do your testing with the key in RUN.)

 

Thanks. I'd already read through that thread before I asked about it here, though. A few times, in fact. I usually search around the board for similar threads before asking about anything.

I did pull the LH side door panel today. Didn't see anything physically wrong with the wiring.

But that's as far as I went with it.

Gonna take the door sill cover off tomorrow and have a look at what kind of physical shape that G201 is in. Hopefully it's as simple as you said it was, and I'll take your word for it.

If that ground checks out, I dunno what I'm gonna do from there.

These darned cancer meds and treatments just take way too much out of me to spend a lot of time tinkering around with it, but it's the one thing that keeps me kind of sane through it all, oddly. So I do what I have the juice for in spurts here and there.

It just figures it'd be such an annoying bullshit problem like this going on, though.

Then, on top of that, like a dumb ***, I prodded in the 30 amp curcuit breaker terminal where the circuit breaker itself plugs in and now the circuit breaker is really loose in there.

I bent the blades on the 30 amp circuit breaker itself a bit so it feels a little tighter now, but seems like I just created another problem tinkering around with this stuff.

I've half a mind to look around for a tech who specializes in electrical, but I don't like taking this particular car to a shop for anything. I trust them less than I trust me as far as everything coming back in one piece or tearing stuff up to get things apart. Tires, the rack rebuild and trans work here and there is the only time it's been in a shop, in fact. Anything else I've done myself.

The one thing that I'm afraid going on is that either of the factory s203 or s230 splices/ground distribution are the issue.

That means the dash has to come apart.

 

It is not going to be the splices. And even if it is, you can run new wires from the driver switch to G201 or to an inline circuit breaker and directly to the orange wire on the ignition switch. Bypass the splices.

 

I re-read your opening post. "The 30 amp circuit breaker for the power windows in the fuse box gets really hot to the touchafter hitting the switches a few times."

If the breaker doesn't get hot until after the switches are activated, it is not a short because all window wiring is at 12V at all times until a switch is activated. The breaker gets hot from the heavy load of a motor that doesn't turn, or has an internal problem.

I just thought of a very simple test for a "short to ground". Remove the circuit breaker. Turn the key to RUN. Place a test light across the terminals. If the light stays OFF, there is no short to ground. If the light is ON, there is a short to ground. Again, if the breaker does not get hot until after the switches are activated, there is no short in the window wiring. Period.

 

I took the door sill cover off. G201 was clean and undamaged.

With the key in RUN, the test light lights up when contact is made with the left terminal of the fuse box whee the circuit breaker plugs in.

It's the same way with all of the fuses.

And to recheck myself about the curcuit breaker geting hot, it does in fact start to get hot even without pushing the window switch buttons. That's also while the key is in the RUN position. So was wrong about that.

It just gets way hotter when you push the window switches.

In the mean time, I've emoved the 30 amp circuit breaker since the car is just sitting anyway.

Guess I'll pull the RH side door panel and give those wires a look.

Just gonna mess with it a little bit at a time. Until I get tired of messing with it anyway. Would like to a least get the RH side window up anyway. It wouldnlt bother me so much about the rain and moisture getting in.

As it is, the only part I have not replaced is the RH side window motor.

 

Well here we have it...



That's the RH side replacement window switch that I installed a few mnths back.

Guess it must have pinched when I was buttoning it back up.

Windows work now.

Circuit breaker no longer gets hot.

Good thing I kept the old RH window switch because all had to do was rob the orange pin/wire from it and install in place of the broken wire.

Don't feel like putting everything back together today and I've got some kind of robotic lung surgery tomorrow early in the morning so I'll put everything back together another time.

 

Great to hear you found it so quickly.

 

Ultimately, I guess it was a short to ground as that orange hot wire was cut and pinched against that metal bracket on the inside of the RH door panel.

Which is pretty much what everybody said was going on here.

Now. Here's the thing. WHY did this happen? I'll tell you why. It happened because my dumb *** zip tied the pigtail to the metal bracket because I didn't like the way that it was hanging.

So, then, ultimately, Natty C did this to himself...

 

As an aside, I do not see an orange wire in any of the power window diagrams in the FSM.

Unless maybe they're calling orange tan. I dunno...

 

^^Curious, so I looked in my 90 FSM for myself.^^ The FSM shows the car wiring as being connected directly to the RH switch. (Like the LH switch really is.) The diagram ignores the "pigtails" from the switch to the connectors to the car wiring.

The power source for all window functions originates at the LH switch. So that short was through the LH switch any time the key was in RUN. You're lucky this didn't fry your driver side switch. Glad you found it. Cheers.

 

Yeah, I'm gonna have a better look at how all of those circuits come back together applicably speaking versus how the FSM states when I get back to reassembly of everything. Probably in a couple days or so. I've got some recovering to do here in the mean time.

As to your thought on the likelihood of the master switch frying, I did take precautions before I started messing around with everything related and reinstalled the old master switch on the LH side as it still works. I had only replaced it for cosmetic reasons anyway. Logic told me to start with the master LH switch before moving on. (Though as is often the case, Murphy's Law comes into play and in this case dictated that the underlying problem would ultimately be on the RH side switch) But, yeah, I was lucky that neither master switch fried is right, either before or after the fact of digging into it.

As an afterthought regarding replacing the damaged wire itself, and as a courtesy to any casual passers-by, this is a good little tool to have in your box if anyone ever has to mess around with rewiring these connectors. Makes things so much easier and you really want to avoid splicing wires back together as much as possible if you can. Kind of a little Gerber tool of sorts for those little jobs...



​​​​​​https://www.lislecorp.com/specialty-...al-tool-for-gm

 

And I'm still kicking myself in the nuts for poking around inside the fuse box terminals where that 30 amp breaker plugs in.

It was a tight connection before I pulled that Mickey Mousery.

But I think I can get it back to the way it was after talking with the auto mechanics votech teacher around here I know whose students tend to widen and screw up those female terminal ends once in a while in same way by doing the same thing I did.

 

Awesome. Good to hear that you found it.