How much of the trim did you have to remove to see it?

Wcnesta

 

Can't tell you for certain as I was removing trim to replace speakers at the same time. I suppose I had the top cover, the quarter trim, seat cushion and back, and both inner and outer weather seals off before I began poking around. That gives you plenty of room to peek in and see. Actually removing the top cap and weather seals should allow you enough room to tell what's going on.

 

Do you know if the front door window has an adjustment that would move the window back toward the 1/4 window? It looks like this window is too far foreword and there is some play in the horizontal direction. I assumed that the problem was caused by the 1/4 window, because of the fact that I can pull the 1/4 window foreword so it seals with the front door window. I may have been looking in the wrong place.

 

This doc has all of the front window adjustments.

Rev. Sam also has a nice youtube video with some, but not all of them.

 

Glenn
Me thinks there is a run on this. I too, suffer from rearwindowclosus iteruptus. My right rear. Same identical problem. Part way up then stutters and jams. Dash it all!
I hope there are a lot of regulators available.
Tottle Pip
Bertie

 

Hi Glenn

I received the broken regulator today. It looks like the plastic pulley caused the cable problem. By the looks of things the pulley threads wore down and caused the cable to wind on it incorrectly, this caused it to jump the threads in the pulley and destroy the cable. For a proper repair the plastic threaded pulley and both cables would have to be replaced. I do not think my Jaguar dealer stocks the parts needed to repair the unit. I did notice that the pulley had a part number on it.

The unit looks like something out of a Canon copy machine. My son was a certified Canon repair engineer and I will get him to look at it to see what he thinks. I will post any findings. Anyone else attempted a repair one these units? My car is currently at my Jaguar dealer for a warranty replacement of this unit.

Looking at the regulator Glenn sent me, I am sure my problem is one of the three bolts that hold the window to the regulator came loose. The top two bolt inserts on the regulator have an enlarged slot that the window bolts goes through and I think one or both are loose. If that was the case the 1/4 window would shift toward the rear of the car when the window is raised, causing the 1/8 to 1/4 inch gap between the front side window and the 1/4 window.

wcnesta

 

Everything in this thread is unbelievably helpful. Both rear regulators are inop in my 2000 XK8 convertible. I hear them making noise, but no action. Hydraulic line for the top has a leak too. What a joy! Guess I will repair all three at the same time since I have to remove the rear trim. Thanks to all for the helpful tips!

 

This is a heads up on my regulator problem. I had mine replaced under my warranty that came with the car. My dealer charged the warranty company $1,200 to replace the unit. Cost of the regulator was around $400. the rest was labor time. I wanted the old regulator so I could check it out, but when I went down to pick up the car, they say they trashed it??? Apparently the bushings where worn causing my problem. The bushings in question hold the window to the regulator. The window now works correctly, making good contact with the side window.

I got Glenn's old regulator for checkout and by seeing how things work with these units, I would think that if the bushings were worn enough, so you get play in them, you should be able to raise the stop bracket on the regulator so the window could go up a little further. I think that would have fixed mine but you know how the Jaguar dealers work. The dealer also replaced the ball joints which were $1,200. I sure was glad to have the warranty pay for these items.

 

The rubber weather stripping was missing drivers side rear window when I bought the car, I have been considering replacing the glass as the stripping seems to be a part of the window. Has anyone found a way to replace the weather stripping without replacing the glass?

Thank you

David

 

File under the heading of 'You get what you pay for' - my rewind job on the actuator lasted all of about 10 months until I had a repeat of the wire jumping loose. I've got a replacement for the right actuator (Part #: GJE2242AE) on the way for $380 from jagbits.com.

 

I just wrapped my third go-round of this project, and now have the new regulator installed and working well. I thought I'd throw out a couple comments on the repair instructions for those that are going to be headed down this path in the future.

- In step 11, the space for removal of the front T30 bolt is very snug. Re-reading the instructions, I believe they hint at first loosening the regulator to get more room. I found that removing the upper window stop from the regulator gave me the room I needed. However, I still needed to use vise grips to get the T30 bit onto the bolt head due to the limited space. Take extra precaution not to drop the stop of bolt into he body well!
- Step 13, manually raising the top is mentioned. I just used the regular top button to raise the roof part way and then removed the bolts. The roof will remain partially raised for about a minute before it automatically drops itself back down to relieve pressure on the pump. If this isn't enough time to get both hidden bolts removed, the roof can get jogged another inch to buy yourself another minute.
- Step 15, the adjust bolt never caused interference for me, and I didn't need to move it.
- Step 16, removing the regulator is a 2 person job and requires some finesse. I've finally determine the trick is to pull the roof joint in and then push it down to get it out of the way. The regulator assembly can then be tilted to the back and slid out of the opening.
- On step 18, I had not only 2 upper bolts, but also a 3rd double-threaded bolt holding the window in place. Using batteries to drive the regulator to the full down position allowed me to slip a crescent wrench in and tighten the 3rd bolt on to the new regulator and transferred window.

Hopefully the next person down this path finds these points helpful.

 

So my xkr had the dreaded rear window reg prob. I had my mechanic guy tear it apart then he "straightened" the kinked up wire and made it all good again. With power to it, off the car, it worked fine. He then reinstalled it and it worked 4 maybe 5 times and came off the pully again. I really didnt want to buy a new unit since I dont put my top up and down that much. It might stay down for 2-3 months and up for the same amount of time. He thinks he can fix it again but we will see. Just my comments about this no real help.

 

My post first will, I hope, be a useful contribution to this discussion:

My passenger side (the left side in UK) rear quarterlight failed during the autumn and I’ve just got around to fixing it.

Having read the Technical Service Bulletin, and looked at both pre-modification and post-mod versions of the regulator, plus Jaguar Cars’ mealy mouthed explanation that the metal is “too thin” but “within specification” I was fairly confident that I knew what to expect.

Sure enough, when you get the regulator out (great write up – many thanks Glenn) and onto the bench, and try to re-thread the drive cable it becomes clear that the whole regulator plate has distorted such that the cable doesn’t come off each of the white end pulleys in a linear fashion, but instead is at an angle to the pulley ‘groove’ and is constantly trying to run up and off the side of the pulley.

I think it is this misalignment that also causes the reluctance of the cable to neatly spool itself into the correct part of the spiral groove in the motor drive pulley.

This all accords with Jaguar Cars’ comment about metal too thin – it is not the cable nor pulleys per se that are at fault, they work fine until they end up misaligned once the regulator back plate has distorted. Effectively the intentionally curved regulator back plate becomes even more concave than it was intended to be, apparently simply due to the motor continuing to pull once the window has reached the end of its travel - possibly a case for a current limiting resisitor..?


I used an adjustable spanner tightened around the bottom pulley to gain the necessary leverage to gently pull the plate back into a shape where the cable came off the pulley at the correct angle – it was frighteningly easy to pull the plate back to the correct shape – it didn’t even require the use of a vice.

The next issue is then how to reinforce the plate such that it can’t simply bend back over time….

The early factory fix was the addition of a reinforcing bracket to prevent the plate from curving inward.

The reinforcing plate is clearly visible in Figure 1 of Glenn’s excellent instructions – it’s the silver plate in the lower left which is retained by what look like five pop rivets. I suspect that it’s actually a channel profile to provide the necessary rigidity but I hadn’t got any channel so took a simpler approach.

I applied a line of MIG weld to the back plate from just above the lower pulley all the way up the centre line of the motor to the axis of the pulley.

The plate is made of such thin metal that it’s really easy to blow a hole through it, so I went very slowly, applying only a couple of short bursts before allowing the plate to cool, and then moving on.

My theory is that not only will the weld significantly reinforce the plate, but as it has cooled it will have pulled the regulator even more into line.

If my welding was slightly more neat and tidy, I would post a picture of the finished plate, but hopefully you can understand from my description what I have done.

Time will tell whether it works, but to be on the safe side I have also removed the, until now good, driver’s side regulator and applied a line of weld to that as well.


In all honesty I suspect that my fix will only be appropriate to those of you who have a regulator that has failed without doing too much damage to the cables or the pulleys, but if it saves anyone a few pounds/dollars it will be worthwhile….

Thanks for listening.

 

I am right at step 11 with the window down all the way but the glass obstructs the access to the T30 (an inch or so space between) - was your window completely down when you removed the stop?
Cereberus suggested removing the three bolts holding the regulator and dropping it in but not too sure how that works with the glass.

 

My window was all the way down. The key is removing the window bracket / bumper from the regulator. This allows the window to be pushed out of the way so the bolt can be accessed.

 

Update - I took out the three bolts, pushed and the whole thing dropped down inside the cavity and presto, as Cereberus said, the torx was fully accessible and simple to remove.
Now for the fun part, taking the whole thing out. The regulator should be in next week so I am in no rush.

Kal

 

IS there a way to mechanically push the window to the "down" position as opposed to connecting the power back up and firing up the "top?"

 

I put the 10 mm bolts back on the convertible top side post, reconnected the battery and rolled the side window mechanism down to the bottom and then installed it, and it is good to go. Definitely needs a lever (I used the side of a wrench to push the brace for the top out of the way and down) to get the quarter window motor back where it belongs.

Next project is a new hydraulic line courtesy Chick Trent and his team with Gus's detailed instructions!

 

This thread has been quite informative, but it leaves me with some other questions. I'm sorry if I missed any of this within its posts...

I have a 2002 XK8. Earlier tonight, my father was driving the car (not placing blame at all - only putting in perspective that I didn't see/hear it first-hand). He tried to put the roof down, and starting hearing clicking, etc. from the right side rear window. It went down a little more than half way. He didn't even hold the switch long enough to put the roof down, and put the left one back up while the right one ended up staying where it was.

When he brought the car home, I tried holding the switch up or down while he attempted to pull the right window up at the same time. He got it almost all the way up, but once I brought the left window up, the right one went back down some.

Is there some way of even close to definitively diagnose whether this is a regulator problem without doing a complete (or any) disassembly? What else could likely be wrong, if anything?

Is the regulator different from one year to another from '97-'06? Worth looking into a recall at this point (if there were any recalls for a 2002)?

The pdf Glenn posted earlier in the thread to remove the regulator looks very nicely detailed at first blush. Are further instructions needed to install another one? Hints, etc.? Just follow things in reverse to reassemble the rest of the car? Are there any changes in doing the job in some model years vs others?

Is it worth trying to repair any of this, especially if I have no experience doing so?

Thanks in advance!

 

This sounds exactly like a regulator gone bad to me. I have a hard time envisioning a different cause.

I just finished going through Glenn's instructions for my 4th time. Isn't that the old adage, "Measure once, Cut 4 times"? Actually it was one time to rewind the passenger side, one time to push the passenger side up until I could get parts, and now one time each for the driver & passenger sides.

Glenn's instructions are great. I posted a few clarifying points a few posts up. Doing this my 4th time, it took me 3.5 hrs including some time spent with leather cleaner while the back seat was out. My first time was more in the 6-8hr range.

One bigger adder I'd suggest is verifying the fit of the rear window against the front window while everything is apart. For the first time, mine was off quite a bit, but was adjustable via tweaking with the 3 mounting bolts.

One item I changed up for my 4th go around is that I pulled the window off the regulator before trying to fully remove the regulator. It was much easier this time to get the unit out and then back in to the body, but that may have been as much to do with practice as with my new method. I tried leaving the window off while I re-installed the 3 bolts for the outer window bracket, but after the bracket was in, I couldn't get the fully assembled window down into the body well. I was stuck with cautiously reassembling the bracket holding a torx bit with vise grips.

One final note of advice it that in step 5, there is a fir plug holding part of the convertible top to the rear post by the back seat that needs to be removed. It's fairly obvious. The problem is remembering to put it back in. Three times out of four I trapped this piece of the cover behind the rear speaker and had to redo some steps to get it loose.

To your final questions, I'm not aware of any significant changes with different model years. Mine's an '06.

Good Luck!