Bilmcna

The vent window actuators on my '63 both had blown their riveted back panels.
Driver's side panel had dropped completely off and down into door pocket, while passenger side's piece was hanging on by only one rivet.

Used my little Dremmle cut-off to trim the old rivets flush with the little panels, tapped for #10 s.s. screws.
Cleaned and re-packed gears, seems to function perfectly now,

75% failure rate seems high, was this a weak point that year or the whole series???

reno stallion

Did that on both of my impalas easy fix. Harder to take the door panel off with out screwing it up

65GGvert

Being made of pot metal, that last hard crank to get the vent windows to pop closed on the seals did a lot of them in. I drilled all the way through and put small screws with nuts on them so the soft metal wouldn't strip again.

MikeM

Frankie the Fink

I had a top restorer tell me to always use two hands to fully close the vent windows. On that last 1/2 crank to seal the window against the weatherstrip use one hand to push the forward edge of the glass against the rubber while cranking the handle with the other hand.

Its become second nature now..

MikeM

When I had my '56 Bel Air, I would wince everytime someone started playing with the vent windows. It seemed they always had to put the muscle to those little crank arms, like they were trying to rip them out of the door, let alone the force applied to get the window open and closed. I finally told any passengers the window wings were broke and don't mess with them. Same thing applied to all my following cars with vent windows whether they had a crank or a flip over latch.

Back then, I smoked and needed the vents for the draft but I'd use the two hand method described above (I never was a top restorer and didn't know any). These same two cars, 50+ later still have the same crank or latch mechanism intact and good and tight.

Same goes for sun visors in my cars. They don't work either so keep your hands off them!