Flashes of Panic

My family used to joke about “Volkswagen Door Disease.” In the late 80s and early 90s, we went through four or five VWs of varying vintages, and every one of them had something wonky about the doors. More recently, it’s been Hondas, and the chronic problem across Hondas (three of them, now,) is putting down a window and having it not go back up. It happened to my car two years ago at the state inspection (an inconvenient time, and one of the reasons the car didn’t pass that year,) and again to the other window a few months later. Then, tonight, A ran the passenger’s window down to clear some of the condensation from the outside, and it stuck down.

This is more inconvenient when you have a large stock of concessions inventory for tomorrow’s track meet in the car. Once home, I tried forcing the window back into its track, but it wasn’t getting anywhere.

So I resolved to pop off the door panel. Between the old Mercury I’ve mentioned, and one of the above-mentioned VWs, I’ve taken the interior panels off a few car doors in my day, and I figured this would get me to the root of the problem. I grabbed a metric socket kit and a bag of screwdrivers, then started removing:

(1) Screw in the arm-rest.
(1) Screw hiding behind the door latch. (Top, front, only visible with latch open.)
(2) Screws behind the speaker grille.
(3) Pop-in clips. (Top rear, bottom rear, top front.)

Then: Unplug the speaker, leave the window control dangling, thread the latch through its plastic dingus and place the now-detatched door panel where the back door would be if I had one.

The rail that holds the front of the window is fastened with a bolt in the bottom front of the door, concealed by the speaker assembly. After I’d tried worrying the window back on the rail, I just undid that bolt, placed the rail on the window, then re-tightened the bolt. The window went up like a charm. I then re-applied duct tape (it’s not just for ducks anymore!) to the various places holding the plastic sheet on the inside of the door, plugged the speaker back in, and (mostly) reattached the panel. (It’s a bit wonky around the door latch; I’m going to try again in daylight tomorrow.) I’d post pictures, but it was quite dark.

Before locking up the car, I tripped the child-safety lock that keeps the passenger from putting the window down with their control.

This project gets extra points for (a) use of duct tape, and (b) requiring Fast Orange for the clean-up stage.

Now Playing: This Town from Kids in Philly by Marah