Swapping the door glass and regulator wouldn't seem to be that difficult a task - but the mechanism that raises and lowers the door window is sufficiently complicated - that every time I do one - the first one takes way longer than I think it should......
The window felts, also called the belt trim (due to it's proximity to the waistline), or cats whiskers (due to the early ones being long and thin) come off first to increase access to the required mechanisms.
Each piece of trim generally has five to eight 3-prong clips that are easy enough to install, but can be ridiculously painful to remove. Few felts come out without scratching the paint work, as well as being ruined altogether themselves.
A great place to start - aside from this blog posting - are some of You tubes offering son the topic....
Once the trim is removed, there is sufficient room to reach in and remove the rear and front tracks that the windows rollers run up and down on.
Here, the rear stop arm is removed. These pieces stop the glass from being rolled up and out of the door tracks.
Here is the front stop. The bolt only need be loosened here and the L-shaped bracket slides out.
With the stops out - and the lower regulator track unbolted from the glass, the glass itself can then be wrestled out. This will take some finesse, as well as some tactical thinking.
Now, the tracks themselves can be unbolted and removed...
With all the bolts removed, the regulator can is removed.
And before re-installing it in the new door, I cleaned it up in the parts washer.
After drying them, the tracks where brushed with grease.
Prep was a quick wipe with wax and grease remover.
Almost done - until I found tow more items that needed to be swapped over.
These little panels make the windows move into the door opening rubbers to ensure a good seal.
After removing the old material on these pieces, I replaced them with fabric tape.
Next up was swapping out the lock and handle mechanisms.
The lock cylinder has a simple clip that you pull out with a pair of pliers
The handles are in reasonably good shape so a quick rub down with some #00 fine steel wool brought them up to a nice shine.
After a few minutes of work, the shine came up nicely.
Next up was transfering the attachment points to the new supplied door glass.
The fasteners are such that they likely have a specific factory tool, but a couple square-drivers made a good alternative.
Here is a top view of one of the guides that hold the wheels attached to the door glass.
With the door glass in the guide and right at the bottom, the last runner is installed on the regular arms and bolted to the glass inserts.
With the glass attached and secured, the winder can be rotated in order to move the glass up and down. Now comes the hard part - adjusting everything in the right order.
And here is the glass, in its top position!
