Guess What My Next Project Is?? Window Sliders, whee!

So my Roadmaster did not survive it's 400+ mile Hill Country Road Trip this weekend totally undamaged after all.  




It seems the driver's-side rear door may have been slammed a little hard, and sure enough, I heard a "crack" sound when putting the window up.   It's still on track, and moves, but it's loose, and I know the slider in there cracked.   I'd done the front ones with the newer style years back, so I guess the rears are due.    They were FINE last spring when I replaced all the Christmas-tree clips in order to lessen rattles...but now I get to carefully remove the panel again.  



Never a dull moment.   At least, with doing this on the front doors on this Roadmaster and the rear door on my old Custom Cruiser, I'm not scared of the project.   Just another thing!

-Mike

Oh and for anyone interested the BEST replacement door panel Christmas-Tree clips I've found for our B-body cars are at Napa, part number 665-1107, Belkamp is the brand. They look exactly like the factory clips and are not brittle like the Autozone ones. Package if 12 is $5.

-Mike

the back ones suck. Good luck.

2016 was a busy year for me and sliders,. 3 windows on the geluz wagon,. and 2 doors on caddy 1 and 1 door on caddy 2,..

wish i had known about those christmas tree style retainers then,.
good info mike,.

phantom 309 wrote:

2016 was a busy year for me and sliders,. 3 windows on the geluz wagon,. and 2 doors on caddy 1 and 1 door on caddy 2,..

wish i had known about those christmas tree style retainers then,.
good info mike,.

When I did the panels on the '92 Custom Cruiser I bought the Christmas Tree clips at Autozone. They looked close to correct, but were a brittle plastic. I mentioned this to another car buddy and was told to go to Napa with an original clip and ask to look in "the big book". I did, and "the big book" is a giant album of clips, fasteners, bolts, nuts, and more, with each actual item laminated to each page. Amazing! Was able to find the exact match to my original clips, in flexible plastic just like the original clips. Since then I have used the "big book" to find correct push-clips for the Camaro and hopefully will be able to find clips for the 78 Electra body trim there.

Such fun!

Will be tackling the window repair this weekend...in my garage. Only supposed to be in the 40's here this weekend, after great weather in the 70's all this past week. Winter in Texas....don't like the weather one day, that's ok, because tomorrow it will be totally different!

Take Care All!

-Mike

I just walked a friend of mine through replacing the sliders on his passenger's side front window. He called me at about 5:00, and he ended up finishing the window at about 6:00. It is a little tough to do it over the phone. I had him pull the glass out to make replacing the rollers easier. It only takes 5 minutes to get the glass out and back in.

Thankfully he did not have to do the rears. You must replace the rollers with the glass in the car, unless you want to do a lot more work.

It's doable, the rears with the glass in. Did mine a few years ago on both sides. The worst imo is getting the door panel off. You have to be so careful not to damage it.

Dutch Pete wrote:

It's doable, the rears with the glass in. Did mine a few years ago on both sides. The worst imo is getting the door panel off. You have to be so careful not to damage it.

Yep, and I JUST had those panels off last year, replacing all the old clips and making them really tight! Grrr!

-Mike

Dutch Pete wrote:

It's doable, the rears with the glass in. Did mine a few years ago on both sides. The worst imo is getting the door panel off. You have to be so careful not to damage it.

It is a lot easier if you remove the rear arm rest supports. They are held on by 1/8 inch pop rivets, and easy to reattach.

I'd done the front doors before but never the back ones. A real PAIN, no room! I got it done, installed a new round slider to relaced the crummy original style. Since the door panel was off I also got out some epoxy, and fixed the warped armrest pad, something I should have done last year. My hands are all cut up now, but its all fixed!

New Christmas-Tree clips from Napa - Part # 665-1107


Updated round slider from Autozone - HELP Part # 74444


Epoxy to fix the arm rest pad


Carefully removed the door panel.


The white slider toward the rear, the EASY one, is fine.


The orange front slider, the hard one to reach, is broken.


Got it out, what a PAIN. These sliders are such garbage! Now to get some Neopsporin for my sliced hands and arms! Arrgh!


Just an FYI, these are what's needed for this project. Well...some of them, have to find what fits!


This was the only warped armrest pad in my car, so decided to fix it while it was off.   I think the heat does this, and it's a random thing.   My car was not tinted until 2008, so from 96-08 it was in the Texas sunshine.   I've seen other pads warped in salvage yard cars, on different doors, so I do think it's random.    Again happily this was my only bad one.


Epoxy, a vice and a clamp. I put a towel over the vice before clamping the pad in.  Did not want to damage/mark the pad itself.  Now to wait and hour...


New clips are always a good idea


Clips installed


Window repaired, panel on, armrest fixed!


Came out good, no warp anymore!


Done! GM should be ashamed of the plastics on these cars, but this is perfect again. Never Never NEVER slam doors on these cars!


Since folks have asked, due to their thickness it's hard to get the new round rollers to slide past the rivets on the ends of the tracks, so I sand the back down just a bit with my bench grinder in order to make them skinny enough to slide past the rivets. I slide the new roller into the track, and then position the ball/pivot from the lift mechanism against the new roller, and use a C-clamp to force the ball into the roller. I tried squeezing the ball into the roller with pliers and vice-gripes and it's HARD to get good leverage to do that in the confines of the inner door. In most cases the C-clamps make this job easy, but MAN it was hard to get a clamp on this front roller in this rear door. The inner door handle assembly is right in the way. I did finally get a small clamp on this rear door/front roller, but it was a real pain. I can see why some folks remove the assembly, but I hate drilling out rivets!

-Mike

Glad you took pics with PNs!!!! This is the honest truth....our of all the Bbodies I have owned in the past 18 years....I have never replaced a window roller.

BUT, I think my luck will run out on Jade. I have that feeling.

brokecello wrote:

Glad you took pics with PNs!!!!  This is the honest truth....our of all the Bbodies I have owned in the past 18 years....I have never replaced a window roller.  

 BUT, I think my luck will run out on Jade.  I have that feeling.  

Man you are lucky!   I've done both front doors on my Roadmaster and also had to do them on my North Carolina Olds Custom Cruiser.    You just never know when they will do this either, they break out of the blue.   Terrible quality plastic junk!

I do use my windows a lot though. I love driving with the windows down!

-Mike

brokecello wrote:

Glad you took pics with PNs!!!!  This is the honest truth....our of all the Bbodies I have owned in the past 18 years....I have never replaced a window roller.  

 BUT, I think my luck will run out on Jade.  I have that feeling.  

You realize you just jinxed yourself,right?

looking cool again

i use a pair of pliers to open up the track to get the new roller in past the rivet,.
to save my hands, i push the ball into the roller hole and hold it with a nice long screwdriver,. then just aim my heat gun in the general direction of the roller and it pops right in after 30 secs of heat,.

yrmv
nweoi
pdcc

phantom 309 wrote:

i use a pair of pliers to open up the track to get the new roller in past the rivet,.
to save my hands, i push the ball into the roller hole and hold it with a nice long screwdriver,. then just aim my heat gun in the general direction of the roller and it pops right in after 30 secs of heat,.

yrmv
nweoi
pdcc

MAN the heat gun is a great idea! Will try that next time!

Doesn't it "deform"?

Deform, not really. It allows the nylon to stretch, it wants to go back to it's original shape.I need to replace sliders on 2 cars on 3 back doors. So will try the heat gun trick. I used some of these same sliders on an Isuzu 96 Trooper. The trooper has a lot of GM parts. The outer edge of the GM slider fits the track. However the Trooper ball stud is much bigger than GM, no way slider can fit on. So I took a torch and heated the metal ball stud, then forced slider on to hot ball. It melted a new bigger hole and reflowed over the stud. It worked fine.