idea for driver door window switch- will it work?

[hpcbmw]

Hey everyone, as usual, my driver door window switch broke. I bought a used one from a guy parting a car on this site and it failed after less then a year- no surprise, since they are all 10+ years old by now. This car has 200k on it, and i'm giving it to my neice, so I don't wanna spend much money on it, but do wanna have the window work for her.

There is a connection to the window motor that has a "T" plastic electrical connector. Does anyone know if the passenger window switch has a similar connector (I don't wanna tear apart my door to check). If so, you could just plug a passenger switch into the driver door motor and then find a place to install the pass door switch on the driver door ( I was thinking of just cutting an appropriate sized oval out of the door panel, and popping in the pass switch.

One other idea - to get the window up in a pinch, i reversed polarity of the electricity to the window motor and the window went up. Can you get a toggle switch that will reverse polarity? That way, you push the driver side switch down, and the window goes down. Then you switch the toggle to reverse polarity, and then push the drivers side switch down and window goes up.

Any ideas/input? I'm not sure where to get a switch that will reverse polarity.

[Mad Cow]

Have you tried cleaning out the switch? Apparently mazda window switches from this time got alot of carbon buildup on the contacts, making them fail. Maybe you could try taking it apart and cleaning off the contacts.

[Nd4SpdSe]

Ya, i'll work, I've got one wired up, but you still need to keep the control unit from the main drivers side to allow control to the passenger side to work unless you want to rewire that up, but I had also kept the box since i was planning a "switchable" switch that i can control the passenger side window from the drivers side still. I believe you can easilly rewire the circuit board out of the loop.

[projectzemx3]

yeah OR.


you could take the switch out. you will see the two wires under the drivers side window switch and two under the passenger side window switch. splice the drivers side into the passenger side. the results of doing this is when you hit the passenger side window switch, it makes both your drivers and your passenger side windows go up or down simultaneously. i drove around with mine like this for a long time.

[ninjajim4]

i mean to write about this earlier.. the real point of failure is nothing electrical related at all. it's the plastic switch part that gets old and fails. if you take the switch apart and take a look at the arm of the window switch, the part that hits the electrical switch and activates your window, you can inspect it for wear. holding the switch pressed either up or down so it doesn't move, wiggle the arm and see if there is any play whatsoever. if there is, then that is your problem. even if it's only moving a millimeter, that's enough to keep it from activating the electrical switch. you can apply crazy glue to the base as pictured below. DO NOT remove the switch from the housing, this picture is only for clarity. in all liklihood you will break the switch trying to get it out.

i repaired mine 3 months ago, and so far so good, so it would seem that this type of plastic bonds well with crazy glue.

[Nd4SpdSe]

i mean to write about this earlier.. the real point of failure is nothing electrical related at all. it's the plastic switch part that gets old and fails. if you take the switch apart and take a look at the arm of the window switch, the part that hits the electrical switch and activates your window, you can inspect it for wear. holding the switch pressed either up or down so it doesn't move, wiggle the arm and see if there is any play whatsoever. if there is, then that is your problem. even if it's only moving a millimeter, that's enough to keep it from activating the electrical switch. you can apply crazy glue to the base as pictured below. DO NOT remove the switch from the housing, this picture is only for clarity. in all liklihood you will break the switch trying to get it out.

i repaired mine 3 months ago, and so far so good, so it would seem that this type of plastic bonds well with crazy glue.

http://people.cs.uchicago.edu/~jamessuh ... tchfix.jpg

You're completely right. I should of thought to mention that too, but that's how the driver side window switch on mine no longer worked and ran with the passenger switch modded to it, just hangling, until I found my door panel. Of course it decided to die in the middle of an August heat wave, so I was desperate, lol.

[Shikyo]

Hey,

can you specify what you soldered where to make it work?

My control unit is semi fried, it is stuck on down position because the down switch actually melted, i managed to get the window up today by experementing abit. Never got them to work together except for one time but then one went up when the other went down. Now I have soldered of the two cables for the driver side.

Thanks in advance

(Just bought my first Mx-3 about a week ago)

[hpcbmw]

Well - tried to super glue mine, but it broke again w/in a few days. I'm thinking of just soldering a couple wires to the switch and running to a seperate toggle switch. Both the driver and pass window switches are broken on the master switch (but the pass side arm rest switch still works the pass window).

Can anyone tell me what wires to tap into on the bottom of the master window switch to up/down the window via separate toggle switch? I've got two different switches I can work with - one with and one w/out the "auto down" feature.

Thx

[ninjajim4]

just take a look at the wiring diagrams in the shop manual. i can't tell from how you phrased things, i but i hope you know you will need two toggles, one for up and one for down, unless you find a switch that has three separate states, not just on and off. i think maybe you didn't apply enough pressure with the glue or were too conservative with it, because i loaded mine up, kept steady pressure on it for 20 minutes, and it's been ok for months now

[Nd4SpdSe]

Don't know why I didn't post this on my last reply



That's to wire in a passenger-side switch, but really, you can use any double-pole-double-throw switch.

[hpcbmw]

Thanks for the ideas and the wiring diagram. I've retried gluing with super glue and the "glob" method of gluing. It's held for a coupe test runs. Maybe it'll work for a year or so. If not, i'll fall back in the wiring diagram and put in a separate switch.