# slamming car door+power window breaking, relations?



## stephenmadpotato (Mar 25, 2008)

Hi,
Recently, my father and I have been debating. He is trying to blame the fact that his 1999 lincoln town car, drivers side, backseat power window breaking because I "slammed" the door everytime I rode in it. In my opinion, I do not slam the door at all, but rather close it as hard as he does. Either way, I want your opinions, as this area of expertise is not mine. It moves downward but not up. I believe it is not the switch, as that has recently been replaced. Thanks,
Stephen


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## LukeA (Mar 25, 2008)

My dad's Saturn has the same problem in the same window. In that vehicle it's the gears on the lift arm failing to engage the teeth on the motor's worm gear.


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## jzmtl (Mar 25, 2008)

What happens when you try to move it up?

Here's what a power window regulator looks like. The little motor use worm gear to turn a reel (in the metal housing), which use steel cable wound around it to yank the white plastic piece (glass attaches to it) up and down. If the thing is too old, the plastic reel could be chewed up, and cable isn't winding correctly and jam up. Or it could be the steel cable is frayed and jamming things up.





In VERY UNLIKELY case, if you have been smashing doors for years, you THEORETICALLY could make the cap for reel loosen up and things can now move around, causing jam.


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## LukeA (Mar 25, 2008)

Some vehicles have a gearmotor that raises and lowers an arm that has a knuckle that slides in a track ounted to the bottom edge of the window.


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## axolotls (Mar 25, 2008)

Yes, this has happened to me. I had to pull the window up to get it closed.


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## 9volt (Mar 25, 2008)

Moving the door in any way has the potential to negatively affect any mechanism within the door. 

I would expect that I should be able to "slam" a car door 100s of times without breaking anything related to the window operation. 

If part of the window mechanism broke due to slamming the door with any amount or reasonable force, it's likely Ford's fault, or the part was in some way defective. 

I like relations.


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## axolotls (Mar 25, 2008)

9volt said:


> Moving the door in any way has the potential to negatively affect any mechanism within the door.
> 
> I would expect that I should be able to "slam" a car door 100s of times without breaking anything related to the window operation.
> 
> ...



My mechanism was just put in (as a repair) and it failed within a week.


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## Ken_McE (Mar 25, 2008)

1.) As a matter of good design, it should not be possible to effect the mechanism just by opening and closing the door. Opening and closing is what a door is for. Unless Ford messed up. That's unpossible, right? 

2.) It's his d**m car. If he wants you to ease the door slowly shut, do it. Never mind what he does, it's *his* door and he can slam it if he wants to.

I see relations.


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## jugg2 (Mar 25, 2008)

I slam car doors all the time, and I have never caused a power window failure. I'm not saying it's not possible, but I doubt that caused the problem. The driver's side window in my moms car (Honda CRV) started acting funny just months after she bought it, but it was under warranty and the dealer repaired it. No problems since.


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## adamlau (Mar 26, 2008)

It is because he has a Ford. I own one as does my uncle, and am part of a local Ford car club. Outside of mods, all we ever discuss are Ford problems! BTW, I understand your pain. My mom rolls a Mercedes and my wife a BMW. I drive their cars from time to time and always get blamed for whatever issues arise in their rides, be it brakes wearing down (I brake too hard), or headlamps going out (I was probably flicking them on and off too often).


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## scott.cr (Mar 26, 2008)

I had a 2001 Volkswagen GTI that went through window regulators like peanuts. The glass was mounted to the regulator with plastic tabs, and if you slammed the door hard enough (which wasn't very hard), the damn thing would break!

Slamming the door (or even closing it gently) with the window rolled partially down was a guarantee that the regulator would break.

Right now I'm driving an '07 Audi A4, and one rear window won't roll down after one of my friends slammed the door. The A4 is mechanically similar to my old GTI.

So your father could be right... I wouldn't rule it out.


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## 9volt (Mar 26, 2008)

scott.cr said:


> I had a 2001 Volkswagen GTI that went through window regulators



That's a known problem with VWs.


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## tradderran (Mar 27, 2008)

Dodge PU'S also eat them like candy.


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## Glasstream15 (Mar 27, 2008)

I have a 98 Grand Marquis. All 4 windows work fine. Passenger side front sometimes didn't want to go up using the drivers control, but it was a loose wire at the switch.

And about 6 months ago I got sideswiped HARD on the drivers side. Over $2000 damage and that's what FIXED the loose wire on the Passenger window. 

Of course it is a FORD so therefore it is supposed to be FORD TOUGH and it truly is. 140 K miles and still runs like new. With 20 MPG in town and 26 on the Interstate which is better than a lot of newer, smaller cars.

Slamming the door, and you would have to slam it as hard as possible, may break something but it would take thousands of slams.


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## will (Mar 28, 2008)

One thought - has the window been moved when there was snow or ice on it? 

I have replaced the regulators on my daughter's 98 Jetta twice already. stupid little plastic part breaks.


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## stephenmadpotato (Mar 31, 2008)

Ken_McE said:


> 2.) It's his d**m car. If he wants you to ease the door slowly shut, do it. Never mind what he does, it's *his* door and he can slam it if he wants to.
> 
> I see relations.


 
Ken,
My whole argument towards this is that I don't slam it anyways in the first place. The car is no longer his now because he sold it to me, but I just get angry because whenever something of his breaks it somehow ends up being my fault. When I was younger, before I owned a computer I used to use one of his (it was basically a family computer) to do school work and play the only game I ever played when I was that old, half-life, and mods. Then one day he got a virus on it and automatically it was my fault. So I backed everything up, while hand checking it all for spyware, and formatted his hard drive and all partitions on it. Reloaded windows reinstalled everything put his loaded all his backups, and bought my own computer and never touched his again. About 6 or 7 months later a different but similar piece of spyware was found on it. (Probably an updated version of the old one). This was some how my fault. He was a software engineer for 25 years, then was a software engineer director for 10. He very well knew that I could not have caused this, but instead chose to blame me. Once again I formatted the hard drive and reinstalled windows, only this time I did not put his backups on right away or reinstall any applications because I did not have the time. He used the computer before I got to it and installed a few things and boom the virus was back. Still _I_ must have missed something. Anyone with half a brain knows what happened. Anyhow, I was just looking for some info/interpretations that i won't find on google to back me up in an argument. Also I hope you aren't bashing fords when you said that them breaking down is impossible because i'll be arguing with you next :twothumbs
Thanks everyone for the info.
Stephen


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## mossdabomb (Apr 1, 2008)

Well if you dont think it was your fault and you own the car...... god perhaps?


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