I have a bad motor in my driver's side window. Near as I can figure, the motor went bad due to the impact that screwed up the driver's side door. Because the motor was frozen, my regulator was very stiff moving up and down the track, due to the fact that it hadn't been operated for the two+ years prior to my purchasing the vehicle.
As long as I had the door apart and the regulator removed pending replacement of the motor, I decided to try lubing the regulator cables with motorcycle cable lube. For those who are old hands at the whole window thing, I apologize if I'm telling you something you already know. For those of you who haven't taken your doors apart and don't know what I'm talking about, or have never used motorcycle cable lube and lubers, I took pix of the process for a step by step primer.
The first pic is of the entire regulator, so you have a good idea what it looks like and how it all works together.
Window Regulator
As you can see, the entire mechanism runs by a cable being spooled through two sheaths, and run through guides at the top and bottom of the track, raising and lowering the regulator arm on the track. When you get dust and dirt and moisture on the cables, it gets trapped inside the sheath, and this contributes to the regulator moving slowly and dragging. A good way to keep your regulators operating happily is to lube the cables where they go inside the sheaths. How do you do that?
The first step is to find where the sheath sets into the guides at the bottom and top of the track. This is what it looks like: Cable Guide
Pull back on the sheath until it clears the guide, and you can then pop it off like THIS. Be careful of the little GUIDE TAB that holds the cable in place. Slide the cable free of this tab, and now your cable is FREE OF THE GUIDE , which is what you need for the next step.
If you don't have a motorcycle cable luber, they are nifty little gadgets that you affix to the cable where it meets the sheath. They allow you to squirt lube under pressure from the can directly into the sheath, thereby flushing out dirt and old lube and replacing it with fresh lube. You can pick them up at any motorcycle shop and they are a one size fits all type of contraption that you can use to lubricate any cable that goes in and out of a sheath.
THIS is what a cable luber looks like affixed to the cable. I used Tri Flow as it has teflon in it and is penetrating so would help to dissolve some of the old deposits inside the sheaths from my regulator being stuck for so long in one position. I would imagine that you can also use the thicker cable lube/chain wax, as those are formulated not to attack the O-rings in chains and so should be compatible with the plastic in the spool and guides. It is also formulated to resist getting thrown off the chain, so it sticks where you put it, pretty much, especially in a light duty application like this.
Once you have the luber hooked up it's a simple process to SQUIRT THE LUBE in until it comes out clean on the other end. Then you merely rethread the cable around the guide tab, pull back on the sheath until it seats itself again. Voila, you now have lubed your cables. It's really surprising at how much more smoothly and happily the regulator arm slides up and down the track after you do this.
You can also squirt a few shots of lube into the spool itself and run the arm up and down the tracks. Wipe off the excess, which will contain a good deal of accumulated dust. Tri flow works well to clean the track, also, in prep for a reapplication of some lithium grease (I imagine the same stuff used on the door hinges would work fine, if you don't use the cable lube/chain wax.) Hope this was of use to some of you.
Happy VX'ing,
Weasel
