We worked on the Camaro yesterday. Sean was having trouble with the passenger window hitting the roof rail trim, towards the back of the opening. I had known about the problem for quite awhile and have just been absorbed in my own projects (the 4L80E swap in the truck, fixing the truck when it got wrecked and now the
Roadmaster). Recently, I clued in that he didn't want to drive the car if he thought there was a chance he would end up with a passenger for fear of damaging the window or the car getting the door open and shut. That spurred me to move this project up front. I had him order some parts about a week ago (door panel clips, a rear upper window stop, and the rear roller for the window). The weather was spectacular here in Houston yesterday so I decided I'd rather work on this window than go back to the storage for another installment of fighting the LT1 in the
Roadmaster. We got the door panel off pretty cleanly. Unfortunately, I did pull one of the metal clips out of the panel and Sean had to make a repair. This wasn't the first repair we've had to do. Those panels are pretty fragile. They're basically cardboard....
Thankfully, we had our shop dog out with us for encouragement....
We got the vapor barrier pulled off and started trying to figure out what was going on. We had replaced this window during the Camaro Thrash in the spring of 2018 and had it working and adjusted nicely. At first, I thought the power window motor was overcoming the upper stop in the rear but thankfully, Sean spotted the problem. The rear roller was working loose from the glass. It is a similar setup to the G-body and is pretty typical of GM of that era. The roller passes through the glass and is secured on both sides of the glass with large washers. The back side has two holes for a special wrench to grab.....
With that loose, the roller was hitting the upper stop but the window would continue upward taking up the slack in the loose components. We had the tool but I figured getting the 'nut' tightened up with the window in the door would be fun. I initially tried using heavy grease to suspend the nut in place while I reached in with the wrench to get on it but that didn't work. Sean came up with taping the tool to make it fit the wrench tight and that worked....
It still wasn't easy. I often refer to my left hand as "just a club".....
Still, with some patience we got it tightened up. I slightly adjusted the rear stop downward and we also put a little high density foam behind the weatherstrip at the top and rear of the window to help "fur it out" and that has the window shutting even better. I didn't snap a picture of the panel back on the door but there are already pictures of that in the thread.
After we were done with the passenger window repair, I poked my head under the hood. It's amazing how clean the engine compartment has stayed. I'm really happy with how we got the battery tied down better during the thrash week. All the fluids looked good. Everything looked good. I checked and aired up the tires and he put the car away for the day. Oh, we noticed it has what we believe is the first rock chip on the front bumper cover. We're not happy about it but it is what it is. This car is driven and that type of thing is going to happen. I still have trouble reconciling the fact that this is the same car we started with back in 2006.
That's it for now friends. Thanks for the interest.
Best,
Jared
