what the heck?! (electric windows)

[dutch5.0]

So I got in the car today, turned the windows down and drove to the shops.
Got there, tried to put the windows up.. nothing. Tried everything, car on/off, ign on/off, door open/closed. By now I was pissed off, so I bought what I had to buy and returned to the car.
Got in, started the car.. and voil? windows worked fine, went up and down again.. left m both halfway down and went home.

Got home, hit the up-button.. NOTHING! So I tried everything again. I feared I'd have to wrap the windows up tonight.

So dove under the dash and figured out which fuse was for the powerwindows.. #14, big solid looking thing. Yanked it out, but you can't see the fuse wire, so I switched it with the only similar one (lock/unlock/boot release etc)

Windows went up! So I thought it was the fuse.. but the central locking/boot release was still working too and that had the previous powerwindow fuse in it.

But hey, I was happy!

Got in an hour later, started the car, put my window down, fine! Before I went on my way I wanted to check if it went back up again too.. NOTHING!
Completely dead again! By now I figured out that the electric mirror on both sides also failed, and the powerwindow button on the passengerside was dead aswell. Central locking on my side was dead, the only button left working was the central locking on the passengerside!!

Which makes no sense.

Thank god, don't ask me how, but I got it back up again after 10 minutes. went to get my shopping and tried to get it down a couple of times along the way.. nothing..

Anyone had similar problems? where should I look?

 

[XxFaceYourFear]

My guess would be a bad switch or a bad ground on the switch. Mine gave me all sorts of trouble, pretty much in the exact way yours is. Once I opened it up, I saw that the previous owner had spliced in a new switch and just twisted and taped the wires together. One of the the grounds was losing contact because of the bumps in the road and would intermittently cease to work. I busted out my trusty soldering iron and some heat shrink and it hasn't given me a problem since.

 

[HISSIN50]

.....don't ask me how, but I got it back up again after 10 minutes......

.....Anyone had similar problems? where should I look?

Not going to touch this one (wait, I didnt mean to say touch).


I agree with the above. Just remove the panel and see what's up. Also do some testing while opening and closing the door. The wires run through an articulated boot and the wires can get brittle and have bad or intermittant connections.

Good luck.

 

[dutch5.0]

found out that the ground is bad on all the electrics in the driversdoor... thats why the relay is buzzing, everything is getting just 6.3 volts.. anyone know where the hell all those electrics from the door find their ground?

 

[HISSIN50]

The window is reverse polarity as I recall. That is, to go up polarity is one way and to go down, polarity reverses. There is not a dedicated ground for the motor itself. I do seem to recall a sheetmetal ground in the door itself however.

I would do some voltage testing at the switches themselves. Be sure you have 12V into the switch.

 

[dutch5.0]

The window is reverse polarity as I recall. That is, to go up polarity is one way and to go down, polarity reverses. There is not a dedicated ground for the motor itself. I do seem to recall a sheetmetal ground in the door itself however.

I would do some voltage testing at the switches themselves. Be sure you have 12V into the switch.

everything (switches, relay, etc) has 6.3 volt or nothing or some strange reading when I use the ground wires. When I use the bear metal on the door as a ground for my voltmeter, I get 11.9 volt everywhere.. so the combined ground somewhere is failing..