How to install Power Windows

[HDT_aero]

Ok Guys as promised heres my guide to installing power windows in an exec commodore.

Tools Required
Flathead screwdriver
Phillipshead screwdriver
Drill
drill bits
18 M8 bolts
18 M8 nuts
18 spring washers
a handfull of cable ties
a soldering iron
solder
ratchet
10mm socket
14mm socket
14mm spanner
and a hacksaw blade.

Calais parts required
4 window regulators
two rear switches
two front switch blocks
each doors wiring loom
main window harness
power window relay module
and the calais door trims (unless you want to look dodgey)

Remove the door trims from both the donor and destination doors... im not gonna explain this as its pretty straight forward and has been documented on this forum before. (thats what you need the screwdrivers for)

if you have the entire calais doors then start by using a 12v power source (eg car battery) to wind the four windows down slightly.. this is done by using a wire from the positive and a wire from the negative to the two terminals on the window regulators... dont worry about wich way you do it as reversing the polarity will reverse the direction the window winds... you want the windows about 1/4 way down to make your life easy.

Now the backs come out easy you just drill the 6 pop rivets out with a suitable sized drill bit and slide the entire mechanism off the window towards the rear of the door and simply remove the regultor from the door the glass will hold its position but lower it once they are out just incase.

The fronts require you to remove the glass before the regulator will come out.. you do this by undoing the two 10mm bolts on the slide rail then tilt the glass toward the front of the door and go down until your able to get the rear slider out of glass runner. Now you have the movement to slide the glass to the rear off the front runner. Its now easiest to remove the top inside trim to pull the window completly out of the door.

With the front glass out you can now drill out the front four pop rivets and remove the regulators.

Follow the same process for the doors you wish to install the electric regulators in to get the manual mechanisms out.

Now to prep the regulators take an 8.3mm drill bit and drill the holes that the pop rivets were in out so our bolts will fit through. Clean all the filings off of the regulators we dont want our new regulators chewing metal shards now.

So now we do the same to the destination doors drill out the appropriate holes making sure any glass (the rear windows) are up and out of the way whilst you do this as the drill tends to get sucked through with great force when it breaks through the other side.

You can now install the new regulators in the doors using the bolts you purchased before starting Since the rear glass in in the door its alot easier to just slide the rear regulators onto the window before bolting it in... if you dont do this now then the rear quater must be removed to get the glass on the reg again or you will have to unbolt it and do it again. Get you five bolts in the rear regs... i know there were 6 to start but you may have noticed that the bolts are to long to fit in one of the holes... i personally havnt worried too much about this my regs are working with no dramas without them but if you really like go and find a smaller bolt to fit that space.

And your rears are in time for the fronts

now the glass goes in after the regs in this case so put the regs in and do the four bolts up, dont install the slider with the 10mm bolts at this point.
get your glass and put it in the way it came out...

front on first from the rear with a tilt then get the rear slider on going toward the front and coming back. (read how you got them out again if your struggling) once the rear slider is on the rail you must now get the glass into the guides you do this by coming back as far as possible on an angle (keeping the sliders in) and getting the front into the front guide now the back is easier start straightening the window making sure that the back slides into the rear guide whilst the front stays in also... if you have done it right the window will end up looking normal. Now hold the glass with one hand and put the 6" slider on and bolt it up tight.

You now have all the regulators in... but dont put the trims back on yet.

Its wiring time

ok get your rear doors wiring and feed the apropriate side through the door after remvoing the grommit you will find by opening the front and looking at the front bottom corner of the rear door.once the are fed into the door you have the fun parttake off the centre pillar plastic trim and the rear outer centre pillar grommit and from the outside push the two connectors as high as you can with your fingers... they should hold there as by now youve noticed there is little space. get on the inside and use a flat head to lever the plugs up so you can pull them through and feed the remaining wiring under the trim to the front kickpannel on the appropriate side. repeate for the other rear door.

The front doors are the same thing you feed the wiring into the door first then feed the other side into the cabin. The fronts are almost at the top of each door and it makes life easier to take the vent cover off the vent to pull the wiring into the cabin.

Now you feed the rest of the wiring to its appropriate place with the main switch wiring being fed to the centre console part (the console out makes this part easier) and i fed the rest of the wiring in front of the heater and behind the dash. run the passenger side plugs over to their door connectors and plug em up (the computer will need to be removed for this) Now cable tie all the wiring out of the way. Screw the power window module under the steering coloum and run the remaining wiring to the drivers side door looms.

Now you may be thinking hang on where does this last connector go... it doesn't so you have to ground the thick black wire and run the two orange and one pink wire to a fuse and run the fuse to constant power... you may be thinking shouldnt pink goto ignition and you would be right but i dont want to have to put my keys into the ignition to wind my windows up and down so i wired ignition to power.

Your almost done

now draw out your holes for the console switches drill two appropriate size hole at each end and cut the remainder out with a hacksaw blade. if they dont fit just file it away untill they do. plug the switches and windows up, replace any remaining trims and the console (if you havnt) and your done...

so am i ive had enough of typing now ill post the all important pictures up tonight when i get home to my camera.

[HDT_aero]

pics are up now ill get some more of wiring locations and finished doors tonight

[Blown V6 Hatch]

Great write up mate! Should be made sticky!

[defa]

for anyone who wants power windows, now you know how to do it.. so look out for all the stuff for the conversion on ebay.. a mate of mine will be selling all the stuff soon... i want to do it to my car but i am too broke at the moment..

[VN-88]

yeah thats is a good thread, if i ever get all the parts i may just do it, i hope it gets made sticky so i dont loose it

[brentons_house]

I'm going to wreckers today to see if there are cars out there so I can make the conversion what price should I be looking at?

[defa]

i was going to buy all the stuff fromt eh wreckers and i think it was going to be about 350.. in all honesty if you live in a big city goto the auctions and buy a crashed calais or statesman.. then you can sell all the stuff you don't want and it won't cost you a cent in the end..

[brentons_house]

I just had a look on ebay and found a set of for and a set of two and the recon it's universal. There cheaper then what I was expecting to pay for second hand stuff.

http://cgi.ebay.com.au/Power-Windows...QQcmdZViewItem

http://cgi.ebay.com.au/Power-Windows...QQcmdZViewItem

does anyone know if there any good?

[HDT_aero]

the first is rear door wiring
the second is front door wiring
the third is the plug that i had to wire power and ground to
the forth is a finished door

i hunted around for a while and got a whole calais wiring loom regulators and switches for $300

[hako]

Top post Adam, my only question is that if I use my standard Exec door trims just how bodgy will it look? - Door trims up here are $50+ each and even then they are not 100% and usually rain damaged so I stand to save $200 by keeping my original trims.

[defa]

you can always buy some off ebay.. would be for less than 100.. sometimes only 50

[HDT_aero]

Top post Adam, my only question is that if I use my standard Exec door trims just how bodgy will it look? - Door trims up here are $50+ each and even then they are not 100% and usually rain damaged so I stand to save $200 by keeping my original trims.

im sure if you looked around you could find some cheap grey plugs to cover the holes wich wouldnt be too bad and in the back you could possibly cover the holes with the rear switches with a little cutting

or if you liked you could cover them with tweeters

[HDT_aero]

I just had a look on ebay and found a set of for and a set of two and the recon it's universal. There cheaper then what I was expecting to pay for second hand stuff.

http://cgi.ebay.com.au/Power-Windows...QQcmdZViewItem

http://cgi.ebay.com.au/Power-Windows...QQcmdZViewItem

does anyone know if there any good?

the thing with these ones is they use the regulators in the doors already..

so you still have a lump with a plug coming out the door

but ye if you dont mind that they will do the job

[hako]

Adam - like I said - top post and thanks for the advice. Friends?

[brentons_house]

so you still have a lump with a plug coming out the door

not exactly sure what you mean but are you saying as in the normal winding handles will bassically remain on it?

[projectaero]

sweet thanks this will def come in handy

[coolngroovy]

Please make this a sticky!

[HDT_aero]

not exactly sure what you mean but are you saying as in the normal winding handles will bassically remain on it?

you take the handles off but you have a cover that goes over the winder cog so there will be a plug the covers it that sticks out like a winder

[HDT_aero]

Adam - like I said - top post and thanks for the advice. Friends?

no worries didnt mean to offend you b4

[hako]

no worries didnt mean to offend you b4

No problems - sold the horse and now on a bike. One thing you possibly forgot in the post on power windows is 4 X Bandaids in the 'tools required'. Every time I take a door trim off to fix a regulator or lock I'll cut myself on those sharp edges and donate blood to the car.

[HDT_aero]

No problems - sold the horse and now on a bike. One thing you possibly forgot in the post on power windows is 4 X Bandaids in the 'tools required'. Every time I take a door trim off to fix a regulator or lock I'll cut myself on those sharp edges and donate blood to the car.

lol ive done that a few times but more so on those sharp body rails the seals go on.... they are a bit dangerous

[HDT_aero]

since installing the windows the other week ive had two problems

one was the passenger window not going up but going down... i started checking with my good friend mr multimeter and couldnt find and issue with the switch. this stumped me for a while as i had condinuity to the window and power was switching to it. i ended up discovering that even thow the switch was working it wasnt putting out enough power.. i worked this out by simply using a wire to bridge the power to the suspect terminal and pushing it at the same time to remove the earth (the earth is connected to the switch when in the off position)

I fixed this problem by pulling the switch apart and sanding the suspect terminals. This required the buttons to be removed (both) and then the leds had to be soldered out in order to get the two halves of the cover apart. once they are off you can see the contacts and the bad ones were badly tarnished. I recommend you test the switch apart so if you didnt quite clean them proberly you dont have to pull the switch apart again.

the second issue i had was my drivers window suddenly stoped going down... i repaired this by removing the power window module all together as it had some dry solder joins and i couldnt seem to repair it by simply re soldering them. so i bridged the direct power to the window loom's apropriate power line. this cause all windows except the drivers side to work..
to get the drivers side to work i had to trace the switch outputs and then bridge them to the apropraite regulator terminal (eg up to up)

now the windows all work with no power window module so i have lost my auto down but im not to worried about that

just thaught id let you guys know incase anyone else has issues

[Anton]

may seem a silly question to some of you but all the work seems to be in the door. couldnt you more easily get the doors from a calais or any model with power windows already installed and simply attach the doors and wire it up to a battery or your car battery?

[bush_basha]

i have installed power windows into my exec a few months ago, and i took my dash out what a C^nt of a job that was, and yeh all seemed ok when the passenger side wasnt align properly and popped off its rails so make sure thats all aligned otherwise off with the door cards again!!

[HDT_aero]

may seem a silly question to some of you but all the work seems to be in the door. couldnt you more easily get the doors from a calais or any model with power windows already installed and simply attach the doors and wire it up to a battery or your car battery?

ye you could do that but good luck finding the same colour doors in good condition but hey it certainly would be easier that way however it would probably cost more too