Fixing the Rolling Stone's Windows
One of the things holding up our attempts to repair the Astro was that when we started to use the Rolling Stone as our temporary transportation, we discovered two problems, both with the windows. The driver's side window would not roll up or down. That wasn't a show stopper. The passenger window, however, would only roll down and not go back up again. We were able to push it back into place temporarily, but it appeared that the power window regulator (the part the makes the window go up and down) was in trouble. We did a bit of searching, and to our surprise we found an exact match for our precise year, chassis, and model of vehicle, and it was even for the Chinook RV conversion. If you're curious, here's the video:
Watching this video made us feel much better, as Lisa was sure she could make this repair.
The doors on the RV have a whole lot of fiddly bits on them, and you have to take everything off to get down to the bare metal of the E350 that Ford sold to Chinook for the RV conversion. After taking off the large number of screws, caps, molding, speaker brackets, etc., Lisa finally was able to get at the nuts that hold the regulator motor in place. With me holding on to the window to pull it up while she worked on it, she was able to get the motor loose, and we set it out on some papers (misprinted signs from Pemmi-Con, as it happens) to take apart the regulator.
This is the gear that engages with the curved part that drives the arm that raises and lowers the window. While this is was a grease-encrusted mess inside, that was actually good news as it meant that we'd had the same failure as the person in the video. The three plastic spacers or cogs that sat inside this assembly had simply dissolved.
It was pretty ugly. Lisa started picking out all of the crud.
There's a pile of grease there, but understand that it's not just grease, but the remains of all of the small spacers that had dissolved into it.
Lisa cleaned it out and considered repair options.
She decided to go with the same repair as the person who published that video: replace the plastic spacers with metal nuts of approximately the same size. They don't have to be a tight fit, as they are just supposed to turn freely. You can just barely see them underneath the main central gear.
Lisa repacked the regulator with grease and re-sealed it. In this photo, the black thing above the gear is the window regulator motor (which worked) and the metal thing to the left is the arm that engages the window and moves it up and down.
This afternoon, Lisa tackled reinstalling the regulator assembly. This took a long time, because you have to get the regulator back through the holes in the sheet metal, then get the arm re-engaged with the window, then get the motor lined back up with the mounting holes. My job was to hold the window out of the way while she did some of these things and also to occasionally go over to the driver's side, and with Lisa's hands well out of the way, turn the key to ON so she could operate the window motor. This was both to make sure that it worked, and also to adjust the arm while she was installing it so she could get at all of the mounting screws. After more than an hour of wrestling with the hardware, she got it all in place, and we confirmed that the window works again.
After getting the motor in place, there was still the matter of re-installing the rest of the door hardware. This has to be done in a particular order (we did one step in the wrong order and had to remove it and do it again the right way around) to get all of the molding, speakers, handles, switches, and so forth back into place. But we did get it done, and the passenger window works again!
We then had a look at the driver's side window. Testing this was relatively easy, because the switch is on the top layer of stuff, so you don't have to remove a lot of things before you can get at the switch. Lisa got her electrical test kit, and confirmed that the switch itself works. Not only will it operate the passenger window, but the needle on the test kit shows that power is going through the switch to the driver's window. That suggests that the motor has failed on this window.
Fixing this is work, but especially after having done the passenger regulator, Lisa thinks it's probably not much worse than buying a new motor (it's a pretty standard part even today, I think) and at worst having to repack the gear the way she did on the passenger side. However, as the window is stuck in the up position, we'll put off that repair for now, because we can now start working on the Astro and use the Rolling Stone to go get parts if necessary.
Click to viewWatching this video made us feel much better, as Lisa was sure she could make this repair.
The doors on the RV have a whole lot of fiddly bits on them, and you have to take everything off to get down to the bare metal of the E350 that Ford sold to Chinook for the RV conversion. After taking off the large number of screws, caps, molding, speaker brackets, etc., Lisa finally was able to get at the nuts that hold the regulator motor in place. With me holding on to the window to pull it up while she worked on it, she was able to get the motor loose, and we set it out on some papers (misprinted signs from Pemmi-Con, as it happens) to take apart the regulator.
This is the gear that engages with the curved part that drives the arm that raises and lowers the window. While this is was a grease-encrusted mess inside, that was actually good news as it meant that we'd had the same failure as the person in the video. The three plastic spacers or cogs that sat inside this assembly had simply dissolved.
It was pretty ugly. Lisa started picking out all of the crud.
There's a pile of grease there, but understand that it's not just grease, but the remains of all of the small spacers that had dissolved into it.
Lisa cleaned it out and considered repair options.
She decided to go with the same repair as the person who published that video: replace the plastic spacers with metal nuts of approximately the same size. They don't have to be a tight fit, as they are just supposed to turn freely. You can just barely see them underneath the main central gear.
Lisa repacked the regulator with grease and re-sealed it. In this photo, the black thing above the gear is the window regulator motor (which worked) and the metal thing to the left is the arm that engages the window and moves it up and down.
This afternoon, Lisa tackled reinstalling the regulator assembly. This took a long time, because you have to get the regulator back through the holes in the sheet metal, then get the arm re-engaged with the window, then get the motor lined back up with the mounting holes. My job was to hold the window out of the way while she did some of these things and also to occasionally go over to the driver's side, and with Lisa's hands well out of the way, turn the key to ON so she could operate the window motor. This was both to make sure that it worked, and also to adjust the arm while she was installing it so she could get at all of the mounting screws. After more than an hour of wrestling with the hardware, she got it all in place, and we confirmed that the window works again.
After getting the motor in place, there was still the matter of re-installing the rest of the door hardware. This has to be done in a particular order (we did one step in the wrong order and had to remove it and do it again the right way around) to get all of the molding, speakers, handles, switches, and so forth back into place. But we did get it done, and the passenger window works again!
We then had a look at the driver's side window. Testing this was relatively easy, because the switch is on the top layer of stuff, so you don't have to remove a lot of things before you can get at the switch. Lisa got her electrical test kit, and confirmed that the switch itself works. Not only will it operate the passenger window, but the needle on the test kit shows that power is going through the switch to the driver's window. That suggests that the motor has failed on this window.
Fixing this is work, but especially after having done the passenger regulator, Lisa thinks it's probably not much worse than buying a new motor (it's a pretty standard part even today, I think) and at worst having to repack the gear the way she did on the passenger side. However, as the window is stuck in the up position, we'll put off that repair for now, because we can now start working on the Astro and use the Rolling Stone to go get parts if necessary.