Date: 19/05/06 I've decided to put power windows into my second car, simply because of how easy it has made life in my car (no more kids kicking winder handles) and how effective and reliable it has been in my car (after 6 months of use they are still working as well as the day I installed them).

These kits can be bought for an EXCELLENT price off eBay from this store:
http://stores.ebay.com.au/Rapid-Electronics-Shop-On-Line

or straight from their online store here: http://www.rapidelectronics.com.au/

You can email them directly with enquiries here: rapidelectronics@hotmail.com

This store also sells a lot of other interesting products such as central locking so check them out, their prices always seem to be very good.
Date: 19/05/06 These early images are just to show how well the items are packed, not much chance of any damage in transit. As you can see here the box is full of goodies.
Date: 19/05/06 In your kit there are a couple of bags with brackets, rubber gromets for the brackets and screws, there is plenty of anything here, it doesn't matter what sort of car you have you'll be able to bolt it in and hold it secure with what is supplied in the kit.
Date: 19/05/06 This next image shows a few more packets of parts, these ones are the plastic gears that go inside the power window unit and onto your window winder knob (various sizes to suit any car) as well as plastic washers and spacers to use where necessary.
Date: 19/05/06 A plastic handle is supplied so that when you put the fittings supplied onto your winder knob you can use this handle to wind your windows up and down until you put the power window mechanism on and wire it up.
Date: 19/05/06 The large packet contains all the wiring for the system as well as some templates for the mounting of the switches.
Date: 19/05/06 These two packets contain the caps that will cover the hole in your door trims when you no longer need the handle, the packets also contain the fitting that the caps screw into on the rear of the trim (shown later).
Date: 19/05/06 An installation guide is included in the box also to help you with your installation of the kit and show you how to you use some of the fittings and parts included in the kit.
Date: 19/05/06 Shown here is the work horses of the kit, these units are what does the work, you will bolt the gearbox end into your door and the other end over the winder knob and when powered these units wind the window for you using a series of cables that move between the motor and the geared end over the knob.
Date: 21/05/06 The first step in installtion of the kit is to get your door trim off, depending on your car this can have various methods but on the HR I simply have to remove the handles and then pop the trim off the door. Here I am showing the use of the handle removal tool, pushing it in below the handle which will push the locking clip back and allow the handle to fall off.
Date: 21/05/06 Here is the trim with both handles removed, now I just need to unclip the trim form the door and remove it.
Date: 21/05/06 These door trims are held on by a series of clips like the one shown in this image. To remove the clips simply slip a screwdriver or similar down inside the door trim close to the clip and carefully lever it outwards. Again it depends on your car as to how the trims can be removed.
Date: 21/05/06 The door with the trim removed, not so pretty any more but when the kit is all installed it will once again be all covered up. It is unnoticeable that the power window unit is installed unless you have your switches visible (like I am doing this time).
Date: 21/05/06 Firstly you will need these packets that contain the fittings that will go over your winder knobs. Find the correct gear in the packet that contains a size and number of teeth to match your needs and then tap it onto the knob. The gears are all numbered which is what I have tried unsuccessfully to show in the next few pictures, so when you find a match note the number and then find the others the same.
Date: 21/05/06 Here I am unsuccessfully trying to show the numbering on the gear, for the HR I used the gear marked A8, the kit is universal however so it should have a match for virtually any doors winder knob.
Date: 21/05/06 Again an unsuccessful attempt at showing the numbers on the gear, they are pressed into the gear so you need to look closely to see them.
Date: 21/05/06 Before placing the gear onto the winder knob I am finding the correct matching external gear that will have the profile I need to have it hidden behind the trim. To do this I have grabbed a gear that only extends as far in height as the knob itself does, this way when the cap goes over the hole in the trim the gear will be easily hidden behind it and won't conflict with it.
Date: 21/05/06 Here I am showing how the two gears mate (before putting them onto the winder knob), the smaller gear will be missing one tooth and this will match a gap in the teeth on the inside of the larger gear, this allows you to put a small screw in there later to hold it more securely for winding. Funnily enough it is easier to see the markings of the A and 8 in this image than it was with the previous. The gears have a latter on one side of this face and a number on the other side of the same face.
Date: 21/05/06 Now I have put the small gear into position on the winder knob, I've found you may need to tap the gear into position, to do this I used a rolled up newspaper against the gear and tapped it with the hammer, I didn't hit directly against the gear with the hammer as it is plastic and I didn't want to take the chance of damaging it.
Date: 21/05/06 Once the small gear is in position you can slide the larger gear over the top, make sure to match the gap in teeth between the two gears so that later you can add the screw that will lock the two gears together very firmly.
Date: 21/05/06 To check roughly how you want the unit to sit grab any one of the units and sit it in position over the gears already on the knob, then holding it securely with your hand at the knob bring the unit around into a mounting position to see how it will sit. The unit I am showing here is actually off the other side, you can see this from the motor (golden colour near my hand) being towards the bottom and getting in the way. It isn't critical to mount it with the motor at the top but it is shown that way in the instructions.
Date: 21/05/06 Check too that when wound right down the window doesn't hit the unit. The unit is very robust but if your window conflicts with it you may find that the window won't get its full travel and may end higher than it used to as it hits against the unit.
Date: 21/05/06 Using this stick of spacers you'll be able to select a spacer to sit behind the unit as it bolts to the winder knob to help it sit flat.
Date: 21/05/06 On the HR this larger spacer will be perfect, later in the guide I'll show exactly how these sit in position and help the unit maintain a correct line with the gears.
Date: 21/05/06 Here is a better look at the handle, as you can see inside the end it has matching teeth to slide over the gear that is currently on the winder knob.
Date: 21/05/06 Here I am demonstating the use of the handle to lower the window and confirm its position against the correct unit for this door.
Date: 21/05/06 With the window down and the correct unit (motor to the top) I am confirming the position of the motor to allow this window its full travel, once happy with its position I can decide on how to mount it.
Date: 21/05/06 Here is a close-up of the power window unit sitting over the gears attached to the winder knob. If you look closely at this image you will see a spacer I mentioned previously attached to the back of the face and giving it support away from the door skin. These spacers simply push onto a raised section and hold.
Date: 21/05/06 Next it's time to look at securing the unit, for this we'll need the supplied brackets and their gromets and screws. There is two packets in the four door kit, each containing easily enough to do two doors.
Date: 21/05/06 The first thing to do is look at how you will support the unit, the installation booklet shows that the brackets should be mounted on the rear of the gear end, like shown in the picture (and shown next). I found however that either side was ok so mount them to what best suits your door skin. Firstly however check how you will mount them, making sure that there are no mechanisms on the inside of the door that will conflict with your screws.
Date: 21/05/06 This image shows how the brackets mount to the inner side of the geared end of the power window unit. It also shows one of the spacers mounted beside the bracket. The brackets contain a notched end which slides over a mounting point on the geared end, then two screws are used to support it through supplied holes. Use of a good screwdriver is necessary, I found it very hard to screw the screws in, swapped screwdrivers to a better quality (and different profile) screwdriver and they went in without a problem.
Date: 21/05/06 On the motor end of the power window unit I have checked how I want the motor to sit then checked where it would be possible to mount the brackets (on the motor end and the door skin). Then I have mounted two brackets to the unit similar to how they are mounted on the gear end.

Note: on both ends of the unit do not over tighten the small screws, a screw driver gives you a lot of leverage and it is possible to shear the screws off if you are not careful.
Date: 21/05/06 A few of the brackets come with gromets and brass spacer fitted, this shows you how they are mounted. They are easy to remove and install into another hole in the bracket if required.
Date: 21/05/06 In the kit you will find plenty more gromets and brass spacers, the gromet goes into the large hole on the bracket and the brass spacer into its center, then the screw goes through the spacer and it is all tightened down.
Date: 21/05/06 This shows how I have mounted the motor end using the bracket, if you look closely you can see the window at full down travel above the motor.
Date: 21/05/06 These metal circlips of sorts are supplied in the kit also, one for each door. Once you have the unit secure these slide over the white plastic gears and hold the power window unit from sliding up and down the gear when active.
Date: 21/05/06 This is a closeup of the gears on the knob, the power window geared end is now secure against the gear on the winder knob with the circlip supplied.
Date: 21/05/06 Here is my mounting of the power window unit onto the door skin completely bracketed and secured. Note the angle and position of the brackets avoid any internal linkages on the door.
Date: 21/05/06 Next on this drivers door it is time to check where I want the main control unit. As you can see this unit contains a switch for each door, it also has an "on/off" style switch which allows you to enable and disable the switches on the other doors. This will stop your kids from using and playing with the switches and windows. On my car I left the other switches hidden and just use the main control unit but on this car I want the option of people being able to use the units.
Date: 21/05/06 This is the profile of the main control unit.
Date: 21/05/06 The unit is literally full of wiring, you'll need to have a decent sized hole in the trim to allow the wiring to pass through (or wherever you mount the unit) but the unit will naturally cover any hole you make up and hide all of the wiring.
Date: 21/05/06 The wire blocks are easy to alter, this image shows how the ends of the wire are pushed into the plastic holding block. If you look closely a tag secures the wire into the block so to pull the wire free you just have to push the tag down with a small screwdriver and the wire will slide free. This is worth doing wherever you will be drilling holes, afterall it is a far smaller hole for three wires to pass through than it is for three wires with this plastic block. Once the wires are through where they need to go you can reinstall them into the block.
Date: 21/05/06 Here I am showing how to raise the tag on the wire again with a small screw driver so that when you push it back into the block it will lock into position and won't pull out again.
Date: 21/05/06 The motor for the power window unit will have a yellow and pink wire, also from any switch there will be another yellow and pink wire. These wires are what tells the power window unit to wind the window up and down depending on what direction you are pressing the switch.
Date: 21/05/06 Before I put the trim on I am checking positions for mounting the main control unit, I was it as far forward as possible so it is easily accessible. In my case I decided to mount all of the switches very close to the original winder hole (actually with one corner into the center of the hole). You coulkd try and cover the hole completely with the unit but I considered it not a very good idea having the wiring running into where the moving gears will be. Besides, the kit contains caps to cover the old hole in your trim.
Date: 21/05/06 This image shows the inside of the main control unit. You can remove the switches from this unit if you wish and mount them individually in the door trim, or swap them around to match the doors you are mounting the units to.
Date: 21/05/06 I am now pushing the door trim roughly back into position before mounting the unit. It won't be pushed right in and here you can see I am just using the clips for positioning not mounting.
Date: 21/05/06 Using the templates in the kit you can check the mounting of the unit and see where it will be necessary to drill, the templates have arrows to show which direction is up.
Date: 21/05/06 Here I am showing how after I have drilled I have put the screws in, only 3 at the moment as the fourth I will put through the cap that will cover the winder hole (just as that is the way I decided to mount it).
Date: 21/05/06 Next I have put a small hole in the trim and pushed the wires through from the main control unit. I decided not to drill the door skin to allow the wires to go straight into the door after the trim but will instead allow them to go behidn the bracket securing the power window unit and down behind the door trim to meet the wires I will run through the car inside the door.
Date: 21/05/06 This image shows the main control unit mounted, it's a very neat looking unit and doesn't ruin the presentation of your trims at all.
Date: 21/05/06 Here I am showing how I have run my wiring down behind the bracket holding the gear end of the power window unit and then down into the bottom of the door. The wires will obviously not conflict with the workings of the unit or the window mounted this way.
Date: 21/05/06 This daunting ball of wiring is supplied in the kit. It may be daunting but once you roll it out you will see how it is meant to be used, it will flow through the car with a handful of wires running to each door and a couple more to power and earth, I will be showing how I will mount these wires, this car doesn't have carpet so concealing them completely through other methods is my aim.
Date: 21/05/06 This is the main bundle of wires that will go to the main control unit. My intent is to send these wires down inside the kick panel at the front and out through a hole in the side of the car directly into the door. When completed only an inch of wiring will be visible and only when the door is opened.
Date: 21/05/06 Here is the kick panel with its covering removed. It might be a good time to pour some bituminous mix or other rust preventative down there while you are doing this job, at the moment though am only interested in getting the wires though.
Date: 21/05/06 Making sure the hole will not be anywhere near the door hinges I have drilled it through, with these old cars make sure you use a decent drill bit, the steel will blunt low quality drill bits in no time at all.
Date: 21/05/06 Next I have thrown the wires through, I didn't but I would recommend a slightly bigger hole matching a rubber gromet and put that in to make sure your wires won't rub against the edge of the hole.
Date: 21/05/06 Here the wires are through the wall of the car, as you can see they are very low and well hidden from anyones eyes by the guard, they are also well away from the door hinge to avoid any getting trapped and squeezed when the door is closed.
Date: 21/05/06 Next you can drill a hole in the door and push the wires through to the inside. For each of my doors I actually pulled the weather seal back and pushed the wires through the existing hole that the seal clipped into, losing one hole from the seal to the wiring won't affect the seal and it made the job easy.
Date: 21/05/06 In the kit is a packet of wiring blocks to allow you to put your wiring all together securely for each of the switches.
Date: 21/05/06 On the main unit there is two wiring blocks, one is for the power, earth and ignition and the other for the wires that will send signals to the other switches.
Date: 21/05/06 Here I am showing a fresh block from the kit waiting for wires, the wires I have pushed through the door and the already set up wires from the main control unit. You'll need to push the separated wires into the new block in matching positions to their colour on the block form the main unit. This is shown in the next image.
Date: 21/05/06 Here I have pushed the separated wires into their block and am lining the blocks up to lock together. Note how the wire colours match the colours in the other block. You may need to sit the blocks closely together to make sure you are putting your wires into the correct slot when you are setting the block up.
Date: 21/05/06 Here I am pushing the door trim out of the way to show how I have mounted and secured the wiring. I have used an existing channel in the door to sit the plastic blocks into so that they don't push against the trim.
Date: 21/05/06 Ideally when doing any sort of wiring work on your car it is good to have a crimping kit and some rolls of wire. You can buy all this sort of equipment from stores like supercheap auto. The kit shown contains a crimping tool and various fittings, then I also bought some red and black wiring (for eath and power leads if necessary) and I keep a knife nearby for cutting wires or removing plastic insulation form the outside of the wire. I also keep electric insulation tape nearby for securing and insulating wires where necessary.
Date: 21/05/06 Mounting of the earth can be done to virtually any point of steel in the car, I just found a screw under the dash and loosened it off to mount the earth lead.
Date: 21/05/06 With the proper tools wire stripping is an easy job, I usually run the tool around the wire in the same point a few times then pull it straight off, leaving some nicely exposed wiring.
Date: 21/05/06 Another "tool" for this job is some decent lubrication. I use Kopr-Kote, running it inside the door channels, any gearing etc it is especially necessary on these old doors with mechanisms that have gone stiff from decades of lack of use (especially the rear doors) but any lubrication will help the power window units work easily. Graphite grease could also be perfect for the window channels.
Date: 21/05/06 Here I am under the dash preparing to set up the wires to the doors, I generally run any wiring as high up under the dash as possible, over the steering column etc so that it can't be seen and won't fall down.
Date: 21/05/06 Here is an example of the wiring running along the top of the heater/demister, as you can see the original wiring is far ore visible than this new stuff.
Date: 21/05/06 Now on the passenger side of the car I am running the wires for these two doors into the kick panel of that side.
Date: 21/05/06 This close up shot shows the wiring for the front door running through to the outside while the rear continues down.
Date: 21/05/06 Here again I am showing how the wiring runs from the inside of my car into the door through a weather seal mounting hole.
Date: 21/05/06 This is another shot of the wiring going into the front passenger door. I mounted it higher than the drivers side (between the two hinges) but it is still not visible when the door is closed and barely noticeable when opened.
Date: 21/05/06 As with the main control unit you have smaller templates suppplied for the single units on the other doors.
Date: 26/05/06 Due to the lack of carpet in the car and my wish to hide the wiring completely, I have decided to not just run it below the edge of the chrome strip where the original wires run but rather actually below it.
Date: 26/05/06 These strips can be very difficult to remove. If the screws will not come out a good technique is to put the screw driver into the screw and give it a decent knock with the hammer, this tends to free them up and allow you to remove them. There are also similar screwdrivers that when knocked will twist and actually help you to remove the screw.
Date: 26/05/06 I have here removed the strip and you can see the channel below it where I want the wires to run.
Date: 26/05/06 To run the wires through I naturally need to add a hole, making sure this stays below the strip to hide it I've drilled through into the kick panel section. There are quite a few layers of metal in there though so don't go too low.
Date: 26/05/06 At the rear there is already an available gap to allow you to run your wires into the pillar.
Date: 26/05/06 And finally at the rear door I have added a hole to get the wires back out and into the rear door. I could have done this on the outside of the pillar behind the lip of the door but I would have had to remove the door to drill the hole, I decided to rather just drill the hole where shown and have an inch of wiring visible when the door is opened.
Date: 26/05/06 Getting the wires through is the difficult part, I can't get inside any of these sections to grab the wires with my hand and guide them through so what I am doing here is guiding a stiff bit of wire through the hole, when it gets to where the wiring is I'll tie it to the wires and pull the whole lot back to the hole.
Date: 26/05/06 Here I have the end of the wire after pushing it through the hole.
Date: 27/05/06 I decided to widen the hole after seeing how difficult it would be to get the ends of three wires through it.
Date: 27/05/06 I am now showing how I secured my "probe" wire to the end of the wire I aim to pull through into the door channel.
Date: 27/05/06 And here I am pulling the third and last wire through the hole, it was actually relatively easy to get them through into the channel. It was harder on the rear door due to the probe wire being hard to guide to the hole required to reach these wires but persistance and patience got the job done.
Date: 27/05/06 On the rear I decided to do all three wires at once, this was simply because the probe wire was very difficult to get through even once, I was concerned once I got a wire or two in there I may not be able to get it through again. I have secured the three wires together with some electric tape and attached the probe wire to them to allow me to pull them through.
Date: 27/05/06 With the wires through you can here see them laying in the channel, once the cover is back on they will be completely hidden.
Date: 27/05/06 Here are the wires at the passenger side back door, as you can see they aren't very noticeable, and once secured into the door will also stay out of the way of anyone climbing in and out of the car.
Date: 27/05/06 Back at the front door you can now see how when the plate is back in position you would never be able to tell there was any wires there at all.
Date: 27/05/06 Again back to the rear door I am showing how the wires run into the door. A gromet would be good for the hole. Otherwise the wires aren't very noticeable and won't pinch when the door is closed due to the factory gap between the door and the pillar.
Date: 27/05/06 Here is the mounting at the passenger side rear, the windows don't go all the way to the bottom on this model of car so I was able to mount the motor higher than on the front. Also I chose to mount the brackets on the front of the gear end instead of the back and will use a spacer on the end that mounts to the skin to support the brackets.
Date: 27/05/06 Grabbing one of the supplied spacers I found it did the job well of holding the bracket away from the door skin while still securing it.
Date: 28/05/06 When the gears are mounted and everything is secured you will find a small screw in the kit that will go into the gap on the gears and lock them together.
Date: 28/05/06 This shows me screwing the screw into the gears to lock them together.
Date: 28/05/06 These caps in the kit will cover the old hole in your trims where the handle used to mount. There is various sizes with a screwed end and a cap end that screws in. For my doors the trim is fairly thin so the thinnest of caps is ideal.
Date: 28/05/06 Here I am pushing the rear part of the hiding cap into the old hole for the handle in the trim, I did have to widen the old hole a little to take this cap.
Date: 28/05/06 Here is a demonstration of the cap mounted, as you can see it covers the old hole perfectly and non-intrusively. Later I intend to make new door trims for this car and simply not even have a hole there but for now these caps cover it perfectly.
Date: 28/05/06 As you can see the old hole in these trims was noticeably smaller than what was required to fit the cap, I simply marked where it was required to be cut with a pend and gouges it out with a drill tool I have. Two minutes work and the hole was covered with the cap.
Date: 28/05/06 Here it is, the front drivers door with the main control unit mounted and the trim back on. It turned out very neat and the boss (my wife) was happy with its appearance and its functionality, she now uses it daily and I've gotten no complaints (and that's saying something).
Date: 28/05/06 Here is the drivers side rear door completed.
Date: 01/06/06 To mount the power for the unit I looked at the fuse box on the car. I didn't want the power windows to always be active but only when the ignition was active, and I considered that when the power windows would be used the windscreen wipers would likely not be, so to that end I decided to mount the power wire to the same fuse as the windscreen wipers on the fuse box.
Date: 01/06/06 This is the old winscreen wiper wire on this car, it's virtually made for this job with an extra terminal available for me to push the wire onto.
Date: 01/06/06 Going through my crimping kit I have found the correct fitting to attach to the wire.
Date: 01/06/06 Now I am using the crimping tool to crimp the fitting onto the exposed wiring I did earlier.
Date: 01/06/06 Here is the finished fitting attached to the wire.
Date: 01/06/06 Now I've pushed the power windows power wire onto the fitting attached to the windscreen wiper wire.
Date: 01/06/06 And here it is all attached to the fuse box and ready to go.
Date: 10/06/06 Here is a copy of the templates, if you should wish to print them out to check the size of the units they should be right to be printed onto an A4 sized sheet of paper.
Instruction booklet, Page 1 Date: 10/06/06
Instruction Booklet, Page 2 Date: 10/06/06
Instruction Booklet, Page 3 Date: 10/06/06
Instruction Booklet, Page 4 Date: 10/06/06
Instruction Booklet, Page 5 Date: 10/06/06
Instruction Booklet, Page 6 Date: 10/06/06
Instruction Booklet, Page 7 Date: 10/06/06
Instruction Booklet, Page 8 Date: 10/06/06
A wiring diagram for the complete 4 door kit. Date: 10/06/06
[-]
Stop   Pause   Back One Image   Show More Info   delay:   direction:   max size: