For those of you that followed my “Ghostly Visitor” thread, it ended with a non-Ghostly Visitor issue of the rear driver's side window sounding like it was going up and down, but the glass wasn't moving at all.

The Jaguar barely fits in my garage and is difficult to bring in/out. I wanted to get all my ducks in a row before I brought it out for the 30 min repair which I suspected would take me at least an hour. So, I read up on how to do the repair, purchased the likely defective part as suggested by another poster ($10), and waited for parts to arrive.

Now, I'm ready, I pull the car out and start the pull the door apart. The first part is the trim around the door handle. I noticed it was cracked on the top, barely noticeable, but cracked all the same. No big deal, disassembly continues. I was following Nori's thread on his '03 Regulator Change, which is plum full of great information. I removed the door card and it sat on the rear seat.

So, here is what I found in my door. The window is up all the way, the regulator is pretty much down. I remove the regulator with the one nut on top and only 2 on the bottom (as opposed to Nori's 3 on his '03). The regulator came out with ease after taking out the speaker. The plastic clip on the regulator appears to be in great shape as does the entire regulator. I reached in and found the hole in the bottom of the window, reached down to the bottom of the door and found the outer part of the nylon pin. What was helpful here was my cell phone's camera in one hole and a small flashlight in the other. There was no “inner” pin. Anywhere.

Then it all came together. Cracked door handle trim, no center pin anywhere, outer nylon fell out, this window had been 'repaired' by someone with less care than is necessary to do things right. I hate fixing other people's bad 'fixes' (aka band aids).

The $10 parts I pre-ordered looked like absolutely nothing that existed in the door/regulator. So, looking back at Nori's thread, I saw what the pin's look like and found them on Amazon.

What didn't go so well

I reinstalled the regulator and had my wife move it so I could see the hole in the clip through the oval hole in the door, then lowered the window so it's hole was aligned with the hole in the clip. I tried so many ways to get the outer pin through the oval hole, past the wire, into the clip and pounded into the window. It wouldn't go into the window. I tried for 2 days and several new toys, I mean tools. That, of course, didn't work and I was lucky I didn't shatter the window.

What went well

At this point, I went back to Nori's post and read more carefully.

Oh. Drat. RTFM bit me in the rear. I thereafter followed directions and had the entire repair completed (except the broken trim) in maybe 10-15 minutes. Tested and passed.

I do know the repair is done correctly now and the pin won't fall out. I used super glue on the trim piece and hopefully, it will hold.

Sorry for the very long post but I wanted to share the lesson learned here. For me, whenever I take on a repair of a system I've never worked on before, and there are experts out there (thanks Nori), RTFM completely before starting. Refer to it if/when you run into bumps. Buying new toys, um, I mean tools, isn't necessarily a bad thing.

 

Great job....i know the feeling of repairing a band aid fix.... sometimes it is understandable, but other times you say wtf