Re: IML: 57-63 Window Motors
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Re: IML: 57-63 Window Motors



When my grandmother had her '64 Imperial between about 1969 and 1985, she religiously put all the windows down in the car in the morning while she was waiting for the coffee to brew in the old percolator, and then put them up in the evening after dinner.  She said just that small bit of use was enough to heat up the motors and burn off the moisture that accumulated during those 12 hours.  As far as I know, she never had any problems with the windows.  Her children, including my mother, thought she was nuts.  Obviously, my grandmother Dorothy was forward-thinking, if not Forward Looking.
 
Neal Herman
1959 Imperial Crown "Aquitania"
1966 Imperial Crown "Miss Dorothy"
et al.
 
 
----- Original Message -----
From: Kenyon Wills
To: mailing-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: 11/16/2004 1:21:45 AM
Subject: Re: IML: 57-63 Window Motors

Rebuilding the forward look window motors is difficult to impossible, and about 10 electrical motor rebuilders that I contacted declined to even try.  I have gotten into this several times before, and they are generally not rebuildable due to rust.
 
Their position in the door subjects them to water coming down from the glass on its way to the bottom of the door.  They tend to rot and rust internally.  I think that those are fitted with thrust bearings, and not ball bearings, and the races just go to pot.  The motors are riveted together on the earlier ones, and putting them back together is a chancy proposition.
 
Should you meet with success, I'd suggest slathering petroleum jelly all over the top surface where the dust boot is to try to keep water out.  Maybe make a larger dust-boot?
 
The other component that's at work here is resistance in the window track mechanism, and this goes for the later 64 and later cars.  The grease that they used back then is now congealed and hardened.  It creates so much resistance that it can burn out an otherwise good motor when you use it if it's not been used much and is gummed up.
 
A nice, clean power window mechanism for the 57-63 models should go up and down so fast that you start to fearfully wonder what it would feel like to leave a finger in the wrong place.  It's not unlike a guillotine and is really rapid - like no other power window I've ever seen.
 
In general, most cars that I've seen have 4 different windows operating at 4 different speeds due to such varied conditions.  Steam-cleaning or pressure washing the tracks seems to be the way to go.  Taking them out of the door is difficult, and reinstallation of mine is something that I'm not looking forward to, so if you look at yours and can think up a way to strip the grease (looks like petrified chicken fat) off without removal that doesn't leave residual solvent in the tracks to break down the replacement grease that you put in, I'd like to hear about it.
 
There was once a rumor that Summit Racing or some other high performance vendor was selling electric water pumps that used an electrical motor with the identical dimensions and the same output shaft, but I couldn't find it after a casual search.  That thing "should" be less than the $100 that some folks are charging for a good replacement motor. 
 
If you really need one of these, I may have access to some.  They won't be inexpensive.  There are 2 kinds -  one that has no black covering and is metal, and one that has black rubberized covering with an exposed band of metal in the middle to allow the clamp to ground the motor.  They are two different lengths, and if memory serves, one has rivets and one has threaded rods holding them together.
 
-Kenyon


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