'01 Pontiac Firebird Formula. OK I need to know how the power window motor is wired to the car. I'm using a different motor from a different car. Two wires coming out of the window motor. Where do these wires connect to? I know.....but if you can help me, I'd appreciate it. Thanks.

 

There are just two wires on the connector to the old motor. You'll just need to experiment before you make the splice/connection to make sure the up/down function matches the switch direction. (You'll need to do this regardless of which way the switch is wired.) The wiring is kind of complicated, but at the motor, all you need to know is that 12V are supplied to the motor and the polarity is reversed to make the window go the other way.


Wiring a different motor is easy. Connecting it to the regulator or another regulator to the door is what... won't work. How are you getting by those challenges?

 

Thanks for your help. Yeah right now the two wires coming out of the motor I would connect one to the negative and the other to positive and that would make the window go up and then I'd just reverse the wires and it would go down.

I just need to figure out how to integrate it into the Firebird switch.

Coming out of the switch I still have the factory harness and there are two brown wires, one tan wire, one dark blue and one light blue wire coming out of the switch which connect to the wires that are coming out of the side of the car. But where do I connect the two wires that are coming from the window motor?? Thanks for all your help.

 

That's the problem - there is no positive and there is no negative. Both wires are both positive and negative. They switch polarity, depending on if the window is going up or down.

Your switch should be fine as is. Just wire the new motor to the original motor connector in the door. Its just 2 wires, also.

Can you post a picture of your new motor?

 

Hi there.....OK it's starting to make sense to me now....I guess I just need to figure out what two wires coming out of the car need to connect to the window motor. You don't happen to know this do you?

 

Wow, that's really slick. What kind of car did that motor come out of? Will the geometry work with the Firebird window tracks? How are you going to attach that regulator to the door? (It looks like the holes will not match up.)

This thread shows a window replacement procedure and one of the pictures (below) shows the stock connector hooked up to the motor. (While the connectors are different, it looks like the wire colors are the same between this car and your donor car.)
http://shbox.com/page/windowmotor.html

 

This is from a Saturn S-coupe. It's going into a custom job I'm doing....all the mounting brackets are fabricated.

OK, i looked at it today and coming out of the car are a light blue, tan, and brown wire. These I'd assume connect to the switch which have the same color wires.....leaving a single brown and dark blue wire remaining on the switch. Which are the same wires coming from the window motor as seen in the pic you posted. So my logic is to connect this dark blue and brown wires to the new window motor wires. I did this and got nothing. I also switched some wires around and still couldn't get it to work.

However, when I connect the wires from the motor directly to the battery, one on positive and one on negative it goes up and then switch the wires and it goes down.

Just gotta figure this darn switch out. Any advice?? Thanks for your help so far.

 

Yea, that won't work. You need to find the motor connector. (On both sides of the car, it will have a blue and brown wire, like the picture.)

The switches in the driver's side door do not connected to the motor! It's more complicated than you'd think because the witches aren't simple on/off switches. They reverse polarity of the circuit. From the factory, the left window switch is connected to the express up/down module and the right switch leads over to the passenger side switch. The express up/down module then connects to the left door motor and the passenger's side door switch connects to the right door motor.


So... the passenger side is easy. The blue and brown wires will lead directly from the passenger side switch to the motor connector on that side.

On the driver's side, you'll need to find the original motor connector for your blue and brown wires if you want to bypass the express down module.

If you do not want to use the express down module, you should do two things:
1) You can connect to the dark blue and grey wires coming off the switch. Dark Blue = Dark Blue at the motor connector and Grey = Brown at the motor connector.
2) Pull out your express down module and sell it. You should be able to get $50-$75 for it, used. They are rare because people buy extra ones to put them on their driver's sides.


BTW - Not sure where you are seeing the dark blue, light blue, and tan wires. The switch should have many more coming out of it:
DK Blue
LT Blue
Tan
Grey
Brown
Black

If you are in to this stuff, you should look at purchasing the GM Factory Service Manuals. They have all the electrical schematics for the entire car, wire sizes, colors, etc.