Talking about running around in circles...
A couple weeks back we purchased a black '99 VX to put on our lot. Both the driver and passenger side windows were suffering from the dreaded window failure. Before we could even get scheduled into the shop a couple who saw it on autotrader.com landed on it and wanted to buy it.
We tried to fix the windows in-house. No dice. This was the first time our Isuzu tech had toyed with a set of VX windows, and they're tough as all get out to fix *properly* from what it seems.
We sent the VX out to a body shop we use with a new regulator for both the driver and passenger side, as well as new window runs. It came back working great and I figured that was the end of that. It sat in our sold row for about a week while our customers worked out the financing on it. The day they came to pick it up we checked out the windows again.
Failure.
At this point we were just a tad bit stressed out over the whole situation. We told the customers the windows were fixed. They were already on their way before we pulled it into the service bay for a final check-out and realized that the windows *weren't* actually as fixed as we thought they were.
That was the 29th. About 5 o'clock I called down to the Jack Miller Isuzu store in Olathe, Kansas. We worked closely with them when we first set up our franchise and they've provided some invaluable assistance since when we had questions/problems we didn't have answers to. Kansas City and environs also has a much larger number of Isuzu owners. Who closer would have experience servicing VX windows?
Six to twelve VX window repairs a year.
I was on the road Sunday afternoon with the VX. Clint, the service manager at the Olathe store was nice enough to schedule me in first thing Monday morning despite the fact that they were short one Isuzu tech and were booked full.
What came next was a nightmare. Monday morning I watched as the trim was torn off the doors, revealing what the body shop had done to our VX. They had reamed out the bolt holes in the doors in order to adjust the regulator position. They had left one of the two window clips unbolted on each window, which in turn caused the clip on the passenger side window to break. They had cut and grinded both regulators here and there for god knows what reasons.
In short, they had made a *huge* mess not only of the windows, but of the doors themselves.
They had a passenger side regulator on hand. Replacement glass was a different story. I checked into a hotel Monday night rather than getting back on the road to Omaha as I had planned.
Tuesday afternoon I got a call saying the window had arrived and to bring the VX in. Within an hour and a half I was testing each of the windows and amazed at how well they worked. Up and down, twenty times each, no slowness or getting stuck, perfect seals.
Four hours later I was back in Omaha. The customers were on their way down to pick up the vehicle. Into the service bay the VX went for its final checkout and what do you know? The windows were suddenly out of alignment and slow as all get out.
A tad bit stressed out doesn't begin to describe how I was feeling at that point. We'd already sunk almost a thousand dollars into the windows and they *still* didn't work. After a couple minutes trying to figure out what would make the problem return after a three and a half hour drive I hit on it...
The VX is a bumpy ride at best. The bolt holes in the doors had been reamed out to allow the regulator to be adjusted in ways it wasn't originally meant to be. I could almost imagine how much the regulators had probably shifted on the way back to Omaha.
Sure enough that was the problem. Thankfully I watched every step of the way down in Olathe when the tech was getting the windows working. By Wednesday afternoon I had the regulator realigned and the bolts tightened down with lock washers. Two hours of driving on some of the worst roads in Omaha didn't shake them loose but I've still got my fingers crossed on this one.
Of course, I'm driving the VX home every day, just to make sure. :)
(The customers backed out Wednesday morning based on research on the window problem that they did here on vehicross.info of all places... which is alright because I referred them to the site to begin with.)
The lesson here is don't send your VX to a body shop to have the windows fixed. They'll do some crazy things figuring you'll never pull off that door trim to see exactly what they did, and fixing their mistakes might be twice as difficult.
We now have a Astral Silver '99 VX next to the black '99 and it's having problems with its passenger side window...
Hopefully this one won't turn into a nightmare...
