Thank you! I will check that out at Harbor Freight. I do not have a Menards by me.

Agreed. I don't intend to drill out the regulator, only the window motor. I've printed up the shbox method and plan to follow it 100%.

 

Excellent.

The regulator to motor rivets aren't special ones. They are regular Steel + Steel rivets. The special rivets from GM are for the Door-to-Regulator and are Steel Mandrel + Aluminum Jacket. I don't think these will perform so great on the regulator-to-motor connection because they deform more.

That being said, I do rivet my motors to my regulator. (Even though many people use bolts and nylock nuts, which are fine for this particular connection.) I rivet because I can.

If you do rivet the motor, you will likely need to drill things out a little bit on the motor and regulator. I think the stock rivets were 6mm, so just a tad smaller than the 1/4" rivets we can easily get.

 

I wouldn't even bother using a factory replacement regulator. I'd use a C5 regulator or whatever LUP is currently recommending now and also his CNC brackets to accommodate these regulators. They are superior to the stock 4th gen F-body motors.

 

I'm pretty sure Lup just has a motor conversion. He uses the stock regulators for all of that.

IMO - Once one is at a point where the shbox method has been done, future motor swaps take 15 minutes and are free. (If one gets lifetime warranty motors.) The newer motors seem to also be lasting longer - not like the duds we were being sold in the early 2000's.

 

I managed to source GM Part #10157547 rivets to rivet the motor back to the door. As I understand from reading on here, these are 1/4" and the window motor holes themselves will need to be widened a bit. Aside from that, I should be good to go (I hope). Just waiting for the weather to cooperate and my friend to have some free time.

 

Those are the wrong ones. They are the aluminum jacket ones that attach the regulator to the door panel.

I have one rivet left from previous installs and I believe it's just a simple 1/4" steel rivet, 1/2" long.

 

They are not for the window motors?? Damnit....I was basing it off of the quoted posts above. So I just need a normal 1/4" steel rivet (no special part number?) that's 1/2" long to secure the window motors to the door? Home Depot/Lowe's would carry these?

 

Yep. Home Depot won't have them. I think they are the 1/2" long ones but you'll want to measure the thickness of your new motors and check the "grip range" of your purchased rivets. (The regulator piece is just an additional 16 guage piece of sheet metal, so most of the thickness comes from the motor.)

Grainger, McMaster-Carr, Fastenall, or industrial hardware places are probably the best places to go for 1/4" rivets. Regular hardware/home stores stop at 3/16".

 

Thanks for the info. Ah, the joys of hunting down the precise parts for our cars

 

So would these work?

https://www.grainger.com/search/fast...&tv_optin=true

 

Looks like it.

 

Sorry, I didn't clarify this part:

Metal Regulator to Composite Door - Special Rivets (Aluminum Jacket, Steel Mandrel)
Metal Regulator to Metal Motor - Plain Rivets (Steel Jacket, Steel Mandrel)

^ This is how the car came from the factory. Many people choose to use bolts and nylock nuts to secure the Regulator to the Motor, instead of rivets. This requires fewer tools and is easier to do future swaps. Since it's a metal-to-metal connection, it's not a big deal.

The Regulator to Door connection is more exotic because the materials are different and that requires special fasteners. (The special rivets.)

 

I appreciate the clarification. Going to copy/paste that into a file for future reference just to have it.

The rivets I ordered from Grainger should be here today for the window motor replacements. That is all I am replacing right now, so hopefully they will work and not damage anything.

 

Probably the biggest risk is to your pectoral muscle. ... The 1/4" rivets are tough!

 

They arrived yesterday. Box of 100. So I tested one just to see.


My pectoral muscle reattachment surgery is scheduled for after the window motor install.

 

****UPDATE*****

Yesterday, a friend and I replaced the driver's side window motor with the Cardone motor using the shbox method. These motors are not remans apparently, rather they were bought off of CARID.com, and are the Chinese "new" ones.

The good news: My window goes up and down relatively quickly now, and it has not operated this well for as long as I can remember in the 15 years i've owned her.

The bad/questionable: When going up or down, there's like a "shudder" that is both audible and able to be physically felt if you rest your fingers on the top of the window going in either direction. This doesn't feel normal, but it doesn't seem to impact the function itself, as everything is lined up perfectly behind the inner fiberglass frame where we drilled the holes to expose the motor rivets. I've taken a video of the function where you can hear like a "click click click click click" in both directions. Can someone tell me if this is "ok"/normal, or is there something we are missing?

VIDEO: https://streamable.com/vanfgo

 

That's a normal noise and something you won't hear when the door panel is on. I've never thought twice about what it is. I assume it's the noise of the motor gear engaging the rack on the regulator.

While you are in there, you can apply some Sil-Glyde grease to the window tracks and the regulator rack. (That's the lubricant that's there now, so you don't have to worry about an incompatible grease getting gummed up.) Some added grease may quiet things a little.

 

Thank you for the response. I was REALLY hoping this was normal, and more of a case of "these are new motors and they are just noisy" compared to an actual issue. My friend and I did put the door panel back on to test, and you can still hear it, but I'm assuming that's just "how it is." And also, possibly the grease could help things a little, as you mentioned.

Just to also confirm, that bulging in the video of the inner door panel is also normal, correct? I want to say i remember the OEM motor doing the same exact thing when it was working.

 

Yep, the bulge is also normal and your bulge looks healthy and full.

You may come across members worrying that the bulge does damage to the door panels and is the cause for the cracking problems that the Firebirds see in their door panels. This not true and we've put that to rest several different ways. (For example, Camaros also have the bulge but not the door panel cracks.) [The Firebird door panel cracks are caused by stresses caused by the felt strip staples.]

While you are taking care of your bulge, you might want to look in the bottom of the inside of the door. There should be a rubber block that keys in a slot cut into the bottom of the door. The window glass lands on this rubber block when the window is down and it keeps everything from rattling around. (It looks to me like yours is probably in place.) Sometimes, that rubber block comes out and bounces around the inside of the door. (If so, all that's needed is to slide it back in its slot.)

 

Thank you for saving me a trip to the doctor. I didn't even have to cough for that one. (sorry, mind is in the gutter)

That's really good detailed information to know. The car has 22k on it now, and has been garage kept basically all of its life and not driven in anything other than nice dry weather. I'm sure that has some impact on certain pieces of being still in place or not degraded.

I appreciate the detailed info. Either this upcoming weekend or the following, we plan on doing the passenger side motor, even though the OEM one still works fine. One final question. What we didn't test, was the window operation with the engine running. Would that have any impact on the noise that the motor was making? The reason I ask, is because of something my friend read about someone else having essentially the same issue, and stating that the motors require a precise voltage to operate correctly. What this person was saying was basically if you do NOT have the engine running, and you are operating the windows with just the power on, you're killing the motor slowly. Does that sound accurate? It could explain why the noise is so pronounced, as it may be "trying" harder than it has to? Also, the "shudder" felt on my hand when it was going down wasn't noticeable when say, you lowered the window 20% or 50% at a time. On full auto down, it was very noticeable. Wondering if these conditions have anything to do with the engine not running and the motor not getting the proper voltage it needs.