70's style window regulators?

[Guest Gee_Rydes]

Have any of you gentlemen/ladies tried to repair window regulators on a 71 Riv or similar? This is my first venture into the 70's and there appears to be a sleeve that runs on the vertical main rod and it looks like it is prone to wearing out and getting sloppy. Can they be rebuilt with a new "sleeve" or do they need to be replaced?

And if I may ask one more question...where do I find the parts?

Thanks and sorry for being so green

Dave

[NTX5467]

Other than motors and (later, in some cases) the plastic/nylon rollers, or "the spring", GM never did service any parts for the regulator assemblies--only serviced as "assemblies". Most of the moving parts were "bradded" together so you'd have to grind off the flanges to get things apart and then figure out how to hold them together once you got what you were trying to fix, fixed.

Not to say that, once apart, you might emprovise a pivot point with some door hinge pins and bronze bushings with an e-clip to hold things together . . . or something to that effect. Not necessarily something you could do without some good tools and (at least) a steady vise and work bench.

Seems like there were some heavy felt pads glued to some of the slide/tube interfaces? For noise isolation and also a wear interface?

Just some thoughts,

NTX5467

[Guest Gee_Rydes]

Thanks for the tip. If there were any heavy felt pads, they are long gone and they are definitely the reason the window can tip forward and back loosely.

[JohnD1956]

I wonder if the 71 window regulators were much different from the 69's? That's where my experience would be and if they are similar, watch out for the torsion spring in the pivot joint between the two arms.

Once while removing a motor from one of these, I did not know about locking the mechanism and I very nearly lost a finger when the tension was released as the motor was taken off. I still don't know what saved me except maybe that play you mention.

At any rate, looking at the two arms, there is a hole in both which will align if you get the arms together. I understand you should bolt the arms together before removing the motor.

JD

[Guest RivyRob]

Hi Dave:

Well, some years ago a friends 71 Riv had the same thing, and one thing I did was to re-adjust the whole assembly---but without taking the regulator out. It really did help. If yours is a 71 then you could , as I did, go to a 72-73 and remove a center guide pin at the top of the door inner panel exactly center. GM added this to help the problem of running the window up and down while doing 50-60 mph which the 71's didnt have. It also really tightens up the whole window when it is up fully and the door open. They get out of adjustment because people use the window to shut the door---A BIG NO NO.

Rob

[Guest Gee_Rydes]

Thanks again for these tips as well. The window definitely needs to be adjusted because it starts to bind when 60% of the way down. The fact that it is so sloppy forward and backward led me to believe that ntil I took care of the sloppy part, I would not be able to make any adjustments that would matter.