to fix the window guides that are scratching the glass and I started looking at my power locks and windows. I know the windows are slow, so that's not one of my main concerns. However, my doors don't lock all the way when I hit the lock button. I changed the soloniods...well had a shop do it, but after about 3 months they stopped not working again. They'll engage about half way. I can see them trying to engage, but they just won't do it. Same when I try and unlock it.

Now I don't know about you guys, but my first instinct was to try and take the lock mechanism out of the door and clean it. However, I've got some fatty fingers and arms that don't like reaching inside the door panel....what's the trick to cleaning our lock mechanisms up? Is there something special I have to do?

Same goes for the windows. I did a search and was looking for the secrets of the ever elusive "Fast electric windows" and all I keep seeing is "Lube this" or "grease that"...well I don't even know where to start. Windows up I assume? How do you get at everything? The door doesn't come apart...so I really don't know how to get at anything in there. Just blind feel?

At a loss here...

 

I have the same sort of problem. My passenger will unlock, but it won't lock.

 

Power window motors can be hard or they can be eays if you run a quick search on here you will see what I mean. There is a fellow on here that can do them in 20 minutes a door but it requires drilling 3 tiny hole in the inside door panel to gain access to the window motor rivets. It all depends on what kind of job you like doing.

 

you know i looked at it a while back, i thought it was dirt in the mechanism, but later i noticed that its actually a design flaw. the solenoid actuates a rod on a pivot, which pushes or pulls the rod to lock the doors. what i noticed is that the pivot piece gets a lot of play in it, and when the solenoid is supposed to push up on the rod, instead of the power going there, it goes into the fulcrum and bends the piece instead of moving the rod. it was raining on and off so i got lazy and fix it but i think it can be fixed by shortening the amount of movement that pivot piece has to make. bending the rod closer together or making a spacer of some sort. if you ever look in there youll see how it works and understand...i hope
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sry for double post but about the window, you can replace the window motors with 4th gen motors. https://www.thirdgen.org/forums/body...g+window+motor thats the link on the easy way to replace window motors.

 

Are the fourth gen motors any better than the third gen?

 

window motors?
they're identical.

 

Gramps explained it correctly on why the door locks don't work right. Obviously it's way common on these cars. Mine haven't worked right since I've owned it, and I came to the same conclusion as Gramps when I looked at the mechanisms. I did try bending the linkage rod to make it shorter. It worked for about 2 or 3 days before it started doing the same crap again. If I ever get ambitious enough, I'll try to figure out a way to fix them for good. For now, I just live with it. When it comes to window motors, the 4th gen ones are just as pathetic as ours. In fact mine, although kinda slow, still work whereas they're already completely dead in my buddy's 95 Formula. If you go to buy new ones, just watch out for the cheap Taiwanese replacements because they won't last. AA1 automotive is a seller on ebay that carries lifetime guaranteed ones. They cost twice as much as the others, but who wants to replace the motors more than one time? They also sell the cheap ones, but they state right in the auction that they're only good for a "temporary fix". Get the good ones and put them in. That's what I plan on doing when mine finally bite the dust.

 

How hard is it to reach this mechanism? How did you get to it? I can barely see the stupid thing with the door panels off. How did you fix it? Is the rod attached to some kind of bushing? Is it the bushing that goes bad or the pivot point itself?

 

I found this mechanism of which you speak. It's a simple coiled lever. One end pushes up, the wire is coiled around a stud and the top swings either left or right depending on locking or unlocking. Mine was a rusted piece of garbage. It doesn't look that hard to find a replacement for...but my god I have no idea how to get to it. It's about two inches in from one of the access holes in the door and nearly un-reachable. I can just barely touch it with my fingers.

 

Power locks are a great idea in theory. It's just too bad that they're almost always designed so crappy that they never work right. My mother has been harping on me to fix the power locks in her 98 Jeep Grand Cherokee, and I don't even want to mess with them since it'll probably end up being just as hard to remedy as the ones in my Camaro. She has 4 doors on the Jeep, and 2 of them have the same travel problem as mine.

 

ozz, i dont have my door pannel off right now so i cant tell you, but im guessing that its rivited on there, mayb you can remove the rivets and replace it that way. but if its spot welded then you may be hooped, you can try to drill out the spot welds but installing a new one is gonna be tough because of percise location. ive never done anything to fix my doors so i cant tell you how to do it or what the best thing to do is, so all i can say is...

Good luck and keep us updated eh?

Gramps

 

I will try and they are riveted. The only problem I have with drilling out any rivets is that I don't know if I'll be able to put said item back in. I used probably half a can of brake cleaner/degreaser on both doors, manually pulling the lock open/closed from the solonoid forcing the auto mechanism to work. Then I hosed it down with WD40 and did the same thing until it moved fairly easily (in my estimation). Tonight I'm going to finish putting the door panels on (I need new ones ) and will hook the battery back up. Then we'll see if it works or not.

 

Alright, got it all back together and everything seems to be working ok. Greasing the window tracks didn't appear to have any significant effect on the speed my windows go up and down.

However, using the degreaser and then about a half a can of WD40 on the power lock mechanism seems to have loosened them up. When I first tried to manually make the power lock mechanism lock and unlock the door (by hand you can move the plunger up and down) it was stuck and really difficult to move. I used brake cleaner of all things and sprayed it down really good all the while moving the mechanism by hand. Then, once I allowed that to dry, I blasted it with the WD40, again, moving the mechanism by hand. All in all, I probably manually worked the lock for about 20 min per door for each portion for a total of 40 min a side. Once I got the door back together and power hooked up I hit the lock button and Presto! It worked! Not sure how long it'll work, but at least they work. I just wish there was some way of taking that part of it off. It's riveted in there and I wouldn't know how to get it back on after drilling the rivet out. So that's it...I'll probably make a post of everything I did so others can see it because I know there are people out there having this very same problem!

 

ya i thought i fixed mine by lubrication too....id didnt ...once i get another car i can really start to look at the design of it and make it work better. if you drill out rivits, replace them with sheetmetal screws, that way you can remove them easier next time, you might have to cut the screws shorter if you dont have the depth but its a good solution. man i hate my car right now.....

 

Aye, you're probably right, but that's all I can do for now. Lube them up and hope they last a while. So far as I can tell, the mechanism itself doesn't seem bad, it's just the coiled wire that acts as the pivot point gets rusted which prevents free movement of the assembly. Manually locking and unlocking with the button on the door keeps the automatic solonoid completely out of the circuit. You'll never be able to feel the resistance doing it manually. I'm suprised there hasn't been a work around for it yet.