Window Sliding Feature - Randomly Stuck

[soulreapersteve]

Hi all!

Wanted to wait a week before posing this to see if indeed this particular fix worked. Low and behold, it did!

Between a month to 2 months ago, I had noticed that the driver's side window wasn't sliding down when opening the door, and sliding back up upon closing the door. After about 10 seconds or so, however, it would then slide as normal. I didn't give it much thought and brushed it off as a quirk of the car, similar to how those crickets would come and go.

That was until last week, when I finally got fed up. Couldn't replicate the issue so going to dealership would probably be a waste of time. Also could never catch it on camera. @Ultramaroon graciously offered to help fix the issue so I drove down almost 3 hours to hang out for the day.


To the fix!


After some troubleshooting and working his engineer magic, he found out it was the door switch that tells the BCM(???) your door is open or to turn on the dome light, if switch is set to "door". When he was taking off the switch, the window kept sliding up and down.

Essentially, they screwed the holder bolt (my non-technical term.) on really tight from factory and that "ate" into the rubber part. Miniscule pieces of rubber were stuck between the bolt and the other metal part, causing an electrical short. You might be able to see the tiny rubber particles in the second picture below.

Anyhoo, he cleaned it off, reattached the switch back onto the car, and voila! No more window issues! All in all, it took maybe... 30 minutes?? Still can't believe it was that easy of a fix! Once again, huge shoutout to Ultra for the help. Please chime in if any parts of the story was off.

One last thing, make sure the switch/wires don't fall into the body of the car... else it's probably a bad day... -Per Ultramaroon.

[BRZnut]

good to know..so if the windows stop going up and down (and I would assume the dome light was not coming on when you opened the door) all we need to do is clean up the door switch?

[Ultramaroon]

Wow, that's some high-res. And ewww, sorry about my gross cuticles. Lifelong nervous tick and it's genetic. My grandpa did exactly the same thing!

Ok, so not a short but an open. This is a clever little assembly. The screw has a shoulder so it bottoms into the metal switch body and protects the connection from the environment with a precise mate to the formed rubber gasket. Unfortunately it's not a perfect world. In this case, the shoulder bit into the rubber and took some along for the ride as the screw was tightened. Even though the screw was tight, there was a tiny sliver of rubber compressed between the mating surfaces that created an intermittent connection.

I don't think the photos captured it. The tiny shards of rubber had already fallen off of the screw by the time we thought to document the issue.

[soulreapersteve]

Originally Posted by BRZnut

good to know..so if the windows stop going up and down (and I would assume the dome light was not coming on when you opened the door) all we need to do is clean up the door switch?

The dome light did come on, but you can use it as a troubleshooting step or indicator as Ultra told me. The windows being stuck could be caused by a few issues, one widely known/documented is due to weather.

We haven't had an icy morning in a couple of months here in the PNW (at least in Seattle). So in my particular case, I was very confident in ruling that cause out.

As always, your mileage may vary.

Originally Posted by Ultramaroon

Wow, that's some high-res. And ewww, sorry about my gross cuticles. Lifelong nervous tick and it's genetic. My grandpa did exactly the same thing!

Ok, so not a short but an open. This is a clever little assembly. The screw has a shoulder so it bottoms into the metal switch body and protects the connection from the environment with a precise mate to the formed rubber gasket. Unfortunately it's not a perfect world. In this case, the shoulder bit into the rubber and took some along for the ride as the screw was tightened. Even though the screw was tight, there was a tiny sliver of rubber compressed between the mating surfaces that created an intermittent connection.

I don't think the photos captured it. The tiny shards of rubber had already fallen off of the screw by the time we thought to document the issue.

Just say your hands are working hands! They've been through a lot!

[Ultramaroon]

Originally Posted by BRZnut

good to know..so if the windows stop going up and down (and I would assume the dome light was not coming on when you opened the door) all we need to do is clean up the door switch?

The dome light will not come on when the door switch is malfunctioning. Correct.

Steve, yours came on because it wasn't in the "door" mode. You had it turned off.