Years ago, FieroObsessed discovered a GM truck window motor that he figured out how to fit into his Fiero, and that window motor flew. He also discovered that the tolerances in Fiero doors are so loose, that replicating his exact measurements on the other door, he had issues. He was kind enough to post up all the information, but couldn't commit to any kind of kit.
FieroGuru and Rodney Dickman collaborated and developed a kit that wasn't quite drop in (needs some small trimming on the regulator/scissor assembly, one new hole drilled and two others opened up a little -- and that's before you decide if you wanted to use J-nuts or weld on nuts).
Rodney, always looking to bring us a quality product, would only use NOS GM window motors, because many of the aftermarket groups don't want to pay for the QA/QC to get quality parts from China.
So he talked to some vendors and he bought 30(?) or so sets of GM NOS motors - which was all they had. He then went through a few revisions of his adapter plates, did testing with a few members here as well as with FieroGuru. Then he was selling these kits for about 250 bucks for a pair, with some optional pieces for mounting if you didn't have or know a welder.
Last year, I reached out to him and asked him if I could purchase any remaining materials, notes, etc and the right to continue to produce these units. He said yes. So I've been going over his notes, looking at costs, and sourcing materials.
All in all, part of what I received is 21 sets of adapter plates, in addition to fasteners, paperwork, jigs for modifying the plates and the motors, etc.
Here is the state of things today
I found a source that still had an abundance of NOS motors.... for one side. I have a large quantity of them on the way. They don't have any from the other side. I'm still looking, and have found a few single ones here-and-there, paying a premium price for them.
I am talking with vendors that have after market motors for the other side, giving them my list of requirements (minimum 1 year warranty, all metal housing -- which is necessary for this to work -- and the correct plug and plug orientation). I have some promising options, and ordered a few for me to poke at.
The company that Rodney sourced the pigtail extension from is gone. All other outlets for it that I found wanted 6 times more than his original cost. So I reached out to the manufacturer, setup an account with them, set up a shipping account, and put in an order. Lead time is unfortunately about 7 weeks.
I am also working with someone on the price to produce more adapters, and exploring ways to make them more efficiently without dramatically increasing cost. Rodney was doing a lot of welding and drill press work on these, I want to avoid that.
"Trinten, get to the point!" the masses yelled
The point is I have two viable options.
1) I can get enough material to assemble and sell the kits using materials Rodney provided (21 sets), with full disclosure that one side will be a Chinese motor, but will still have a 1 year warranty that I will honor for the original unit. I can do this as a "one and done", and price them slightly less than what Rodney was selling them for, break even for time and materials and enough to have a nice dinner, and that's it. These go into the ether. It'd be $225 plus shipping.
2) Once I get pricing on producing more adapter plates, I can update this thread on what that price would be to make this a sustainable operation. I don't know what that will do to the price yet. I'm going to have a talk with the machinist tonight and kick around some ideas. He originally pitched the idea of making it out of a single chunk of aluminum or steel, but that would generate a tremendous amount of material waste (because of the tall stand-offs that it uses for mounting), which would have pushed the cost of the setup well past 300. I made it clear that I'd like to find options to keep costs low, but also eliminate some of the secondary work that Rodney was doing on them. When that pricing is figured out, I'll post what the cost per set will be if we want to make this sustainably.
Ultimately, it's going to be what the community wants. I would hope there's enough demand to go the second route, but I also recall a few people commenting that Rodney's original asking price was kind of steep, and the cost of materials has only gone up since then.
If you are interested in getting a set, please post here and let me know if you'd be willing to pay more than 225 for a set, so I can gauge interest and know how many (if any) more adapters I should have made.
This thread is a way for me to get an idea of interest in the community for this product, and will help guide how I'm going to approach this. If you've read all of this, then I thank you for your time.
This maybe more of a logistics thing, and it seems like you have already committed at least a group purchase of the motors.
But wouldn't it be easier just to sell the adapter kits, and have everyone source or buy the Chinese made motors themselves? That way you are t responsible for the motors, reduces your cost, and simplifies your offering.
It's a fair question and one I have considered. There are two issues. One minor, one major.
1. There are a lot of variances in motor housing design from the donor vehicle. Things that work fine in those trucks won't work with the adapter. I could give requirements, and people could likely find matching criteria.
2. The flanges on the motor need to be tapped (threaded). If this is not done dead square, it may not bolt to the adapter plate correctly, and drilling/retapping to correct it may cause unwanted slop, or worse, weaken the flange enough that it breaks from torquing forces. I don't know how likely this is, and I don't want someone to find out the hard way and wind up needing to replace glass.
So if I do make the adapters to sell them direct, it would have to be a "no refunds/guarantees" thing. As mentioned, it's not a drop-in adapter. It is an option I'll keep in mind!
Talking with Rodney, FieroGuru, and the machinist, we've got some ideas we're exploring.
The next few weeks, as the machinist has time, he'll be picking up some blanks and trying out some things with producing the adapters, tracking his time/materials costs for me (so paying for R&D, but if we can get a less costly product without sacrificing quality, that's a good thing, it will help with pricing).
I've got to order some materials to ship to him. The upside is we've got some time to explore these options, as I've got that lead-time to wait out for the pigtail extensions.
I'll keep everyone posted once we've explored these ideas. I don't know how long it'll take for the machinist to run through these ideas, even though he is being compensated, this is obviously not a big job for him (yet. Hopefully).
⚠️ Warning: Changing or "upgrading" the motors is often not fixing your problem when windows or other things are slow to operate. "Dead" motors are a side effect of true cause of slow operation.
Iffy wiring, switches, and window mechanical can cause slow opening closing or both. Examples:
● Not just Fiero has full power to the motors going thru the switches and anything causing resistance will slow the motor. Burn switches etc just adds way more resistance until they die but every joint adds some resistance even when new. Just look @ heater blower and resistor pack that often have 1 or more resistors < 1Ω, even the Highest resistor is often < 2Ω, all majorly affecting blower speed. That's ignoring other iffy power, ground or both covered my Cave, Electric Motors
● Window Rollers, counter weight spring, and more can bind and slow operation. Rollers shrink on the ball over time and won't roll right even when you re-lube them. Often people use wrong grease here and make problems worse. Big spring gets rust and dirt in the coil causing binding too. Is there to counter weight the glass so the crank doesn't see a big load on the end of the arms. If that the spring fails completely, hand crank or power motor will not raise the glass for even small windows and often break other parts.
So you change to NOS GM motors or anything else and do not fix the rest then the new motors can quickly have same problems too. Because Low volts and Mech problems can quickly "eat" the brushes and coils in the new motor because motors pulls way more Amps to do its job.
Side Note: Avoid using PW when engine off for same reason. Battery Only you get < volts @ ~ 12.6 full charge vs. Engine and thus Alt Running that putting out 14-15 volts. Because many miss that After power passes thru all connections the motor gets 0.5 to 1 volt less then battery or alt output @ best. HL and other heavy power users have same issue. Put a volt meter across HL Bulb to see this easy. If have iffy HL switches, crap grounds, etc then HL Bulbs can see 11 volt or less w/ alt pushing 14+ volts. (HL bulb plugged into the socket to read volt between black and color wires.)
------------------ Dr. Ian Malcolm: Yeah, but your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should. (Jurassic Park)
I'm sure many of us, especially those that have been here for more than 10 years, have read all of the very many threads on how to adjust dew wipes, replace assist springs, clear and properly lube tracks, etc.
Unfortunately, that doesn't always fix the issue. And to your point on power, Rodney even had/has a relay upgrade kit, to deal with cases where insufficient power was traveling through corroding connections in the switch.
I know I went through everything on my last Fiero. Even CowsPatoot had found some GM Tech article on what position to put the window in when adjusting things to ensure proper operation. I think many of us have.
The nice part about this setup, is it should be done with the regulator assembly removed (I honestly don't see how it could be done without taking it out), and I think anyone with the knowledge and ability to put this setup in is going to know to clean and lubricate everything properly, and adjust dew wipe tension. I actually think those items were part of Rodney's original instructions that he included with the setup. Anyone that gets into modifying their cars, they usually know they are accepting some form of risk, no matter how minor.
Thank you for the effort you've put into amassing knowledge and organizing it on your site. It is an excellent reference for people that are looking to keep their Fiero stock.
The pigtail extensions that Rodney used were ordered a few weeks ago. I'm expecting them to be at my door in late March/early April.
I've also had some chats with FieroGuru, and since this kit is installed on the window regulator while it's out of the car, we couldn't think of a reason why the 20mm spacers need to be welded on. This will save labor time, which is an opportunity to reduce the pricing.
I've also found a source on bulk stainless steel spacers, the order is in, now I just need to see if they deliver on time and if the quality is good.
The machinist that is working on the adapter plates has everything he needed to update the design to compensate for the minor difference on the back of the motor. The short spacers that Rodney was welding on will be part of the raw material. These could also just be put on as the spacers, and screwed into place when I do the assembly of the motors/adapters and modification of the motors, but if the cost difference between it being part of the adapter versus buying the washers and fitting everything together is a wash, then we'll just keep it as part of the adapter. This is a wait-and-see once he cranks out a few test pieces and gives me the final materials/labor cost.
Assuming they are ready in time, I'll bring some sets to Carlisle and to the 40th. Save on shipping!
⚠️ Warning: Changing or "upgrading" the motors is often not fixing your problem when windows or other things are slow to operate. "Dead" motors are a side effect of true cause of slow operation.
Iffy wiring, switches, and window mechanical can cause slow opening closing or both. Examples:
● Not just Fiero has full power to the motors going thru the switches and anything causing resistance will slow the motor. Burn switches etc just adds way more resistance until they die but every joint adds some resistance even when new. Just look @ heater blower and resistor pack that often have 1 or more resistors < 1Ω, even the Highest resistor is often < 2Ω, all majorly affecting blower speed. That's ignoring other iffy power, ground or both covered my Cave, Electric Motors
● Window Rollers, counter weight spring, and more can bind and slow operation. Rollers shrink on the ball over time and won't roll right even when you re-lube them. Often people use wrong grease here and make problems worse. Big spring gets rust and dirt in the coil causing binding too. Is there to counter weight the glass so the crank doesn't see a big load on the end of the arms. If that the spring fails completely, hand crank or power motor will not raise the glass for even small windows and often break other parts.
So you change to NOS GM motors or anything else and do not fix the rest then the new motors can quickly have same problems too. Because Low volts and Mech problems can quickly "eat" the brushes and coils in the new motor because motors pulls way more Amps to do its job.
Side Note: Avoid using PW when engine off for same reason. Battery Only you get < volts @ ~ 12.6 full charge vs. Engine and thus Alt Running that putting out 14-15 volts. Because many miss that After power passes thru all connections the motor gets 0.5 to 1 volt less then battery or alt output @ best. HL and other heavy power users have same issue. Put a volt meter across HL Bulb to see this easy. If have iffy HL switches, crap grounds, etc then HL Bulbs can see 11 volt or less w/ alt pushing 14+ volts. (HL bulb plugged into the socket to read volt between black and color wires.)
Didn't want to detract from the main post, but this is some excellent advice. I remember my windows going up MUCH, MUCH, faster than they do now. Ignoring the fact that the car has been in storage for 12 years, but from what I remember back in 1996 when I got the car, to 2011 when I put it in storage.
I am expecting the wiring pigtails to show up in the next few weeks, so I bought a part for my drill press to open up the shaft hole on the back of the adapter plate for the side that will be using the Chinese motors.
Yesterday I went ahead and modified 5 of the adapters for that side. Took me longer than I had hoped, but I don't have a big enough need to invest in a bench lathe, so I will make due.
Here is the shot of the increased 'webbing' around the shaft on the back of the Chinese motors. This is what needed to be accounted for.
Here's a shot with one part way through being cut out on my drill press.
It was obviously going to have some rough edges and burrs, but I bought grinding stones just for that reason, and used them to smooth out the inside radius as well as the surface on both sides.
And here's a shot of the 5 of them now that they're set.
When I was reading Rodney's instructions on the website I was having a tough time following along, I hope I will understand them once I have everything in front of me. As I stumble through I will make notes and take more pictures. Because quite frankly, I often need to physically do a thing in order to learn it. And I just want to make sure that anyone who gets a kit from me is going to get all the right parts, and if they have questions, I'll be in a better position to answer them.
So I will ask Mike to let me use his car as my test bed to install a set of Rodney's adapters and go from there.
The machinist who is working on updated versions of the adapters is finished with the first set for testing. He's going to ship those to me sometime this week. I will then put the Fiero regulator I have laying around in a vice to do some test fitting and comparison to how everything mounts/measures against Rodney's design.
Once the bench setup is done, I'll use another Friends Fiero (probably one of Chugs Fieros) to install the new version of the adapter and again test everything. That will take some more time as I want to make sure everything works with both the J-nut method Rodney offered, as well as the weld-on method. And that will also let me document and ready a set of instructions for when / if I use up the stock I bought from Rodney, and need to start producing the new adapters.
I'm hoping that demand will eventually exceed the ~25 sets I can put together with Rodney's old stock adapters. I'm still exploring ways that I can reduce costs without reducing quality, some of it is where risk-reward comes in. Like with the various fasteners that are supplied, I can buy them in big-bulk and save considerably on cost-per-unit, but how long will it take me to sell 200 sets? Probably a long time. And that cost break would be offset slightly by shipping costs, so the overall reduction in retail price would have been around $20 bucks. So my out of pocket goes up and may never be recovered.
All that said, in order to make this a sustainable product, the price per set will need to stay at the $250 mark.
Here is the shot of the increased 'webbing' around the shaft on the back of the Chinese motors. This is what needed to be accounted for.
Here's a shot with one part way through being cut out on my drill press.
It was obviously going to have some rough edges and burrs, but I bought grinding stones just for that reason, and used them to smooth out the inside radius as well as the surface on both sides.
Our of curiosity, have you considered an HSS step drill. It would probably give you a cleaner cut and eliminate / reduce the grinding to smooth the rough edges. Also, if you're modifying an existing hole, the conical point is somewhat self-centering.
I hadn't considered that. I appreciate the suggestion. I would need to either find a bit that has a steep angle to it's step, or figure out something else for holding the adapters in place. If there's too much travel before the diameter of the bit gets to where I need it to be, it'll drill through my drill press vise.
On an update side of things, I received the first set of adapters from the machinist. Unfortunately there was an oversight caused by "I assumed..." on both of us. He said it was an easy fix that he could apply to that set, and incorporate into future sets. So I shipped them back along with a set of Rodney's adapters and a motor (all stuff he had before), and four of the spacers I've bought for this latest generation of adapters. It was a good learning opportunity for me when working with a remote supplier on something that is sneaky in it's complexity.
The pigtails should be here by mid-April now, assuming no delays or issues with customs/shipping. Next weekend I'm going to bust out the tap set and start tapping the motor mount channels and level-grinding the required areas. Given that Rodney supplied me with multiple jigs to do this part of the work, I suspect this is where he invested quite a bit of time as well.
I started tapping the threads into the Chinese-side motors today. It's my first time doing this, so a bit of a learning curve.
Rodney had supplied me with the various jigs he used to prepare the adapters and motors, and they are all very clever. The one for this task holds the motor, centering it by the 'driveshaft' and a supporting collar, with a locking arm on top to clamp it into place.
I was worried about making sure the tap was square, and a quick internet search turned up the tactic of using a drill press (turning the chuck hand of course) to start the threads then moving to driving it by hand. This part went easy enough. The issue came in when moving to the hand driver.
The hand driver for the tap is a compression style sleeve/collar setup. So the sleeve has small vertical cuts in it to allow the sleeve to open up to accept the larger taps, and clamp down for smaller ones, based on how far you can tighten down the collar.
The downside is, the inside of the sleeve is otherwise still completely round/smooth. The taps all have a square head on them. The cuts in the sleeve are not big enough to 'bite' the corners of the tap head. No matter how hard I tightened down that sleeve (to the point I tried pliers for extra leverage, and the handle for turning the driver was flexing), it would start to spin on the tap when I was near the half-way point.
So... back to the drill press, where the chucks fingers would bite better on the tap head. This was not without it's own challenges.
1. The drill press vise I have is not big enough to let me orientate it and the jig to get to all three of the holes. So one of them I do in the vise, the others I have to lower the tray of the drill press and set the jig on top of the vise.
2. The learning curve of how much pressure to put down on the drill press arm, and how often you have to counter-turn the tap to clear out the threads, and how often you should add Tap Magic. A few times I was worried my tap was already getting dull, but turned out I was either putting too much or not enough pressure on the arm.
3. Turning the chuck by hand to drive the tap takes an annoying toll. It's a great forearm workout, but have some blisters and blood blisters. I probably should have put on padded gloves or something when my hands started to hurt (I just had on standard disposable work gloves). I thought about putting an alan key in the chuck keyway, but I decided against it for now - I'm worried about marring up the keyway. I need to see if there's something out there I can put onto the chuck that engages the keyway in a solid/stable way and lets me turn it by hand.
All in all, it took me longer than I hoped to get the handful of motors tapped today, but the last one went quicker as I dialed in that turn/counter-turn and arm pressure ordeal. So I hope it'll go quicker next time. I also need to buy a shop vac or something to make it easier to clean up all these tiny aluminum shavings.
In other news, the latest revision of the next generation of adapters are on their way back to me. I'm looking forward to doing a test run with them. The manufacturer for the pigtails reached out to me late last week to apologize that they were a little behind schedule, and they're estimating I should get my order in the last week of April or first week of May. Fingers crossed there.
One thing I realized I needed to source still were the really good crimp butt-connectors, similar to what Rodney provided. Mike showed me a clever butt connector - besides the crimp and having an overlay of clear shrink-tubing on it, it also had a small amount of a "low melting point" solder in it, so when you hit it with the lighter to seal up the shrink tube, that solder inside would melt into the strands of the wire, too. I thought that was kind of neat. So you had the twisted wire, metal crimp, and solder all working to ensure a good connection, and shrink tube to protect it!
[This message has been edited by Trinten (edited 04-02-2023).]
Besides the recommendation from Larry, FieroGuru was also kind enough to share tips and tool recommendations to help me out. I've also gotten some other general supportive PMs from folks - thank you all for watching the progress and the support!
The tool that Larry recommended showed up first (the one that FieroGuru recommended is on the way). So today I put a motor in the jig, used the drill press to do a manual-twist to start the threads so it's square, going about 1/3 way in all three spots, then moved the bit to the handle. WOW what a difference!! It went a little more than twice as fast from start to finish.
I ordered another M8x1.25 tap today (after watching Project Farm's video on taps and dies to find a quality one -- I didn't find that video before I bought the tap and die set that I currently have). So this way I can leave one in the drill press and one clamped in the hand driver.
The plan is to have enough motors all tapped to use up the last of the adapters I got from Rodney by the time the wiring pigtails show up.
I still need to sort out sourcing for the hardware. Prior to that I need to complete a formal inventory of what I got from Rodney, bag the stuff into kits, and figure out what (if anything) I still need to buy. So far I've just unpacked the boxes he sent me a few times and said "damn, that's a big bag of <insert washer, bolt, etc>."
I'm going to work on putting some complete sets together, and make time tomorrow and Friday to focus on the fastener side of things.
When I have sets ready to go, I'll be reaching out to folks who have posted here and sent me a PM asking to be in queue for one. After those are done (or I have sets ready beyond them) I will start a thread in the Mall, and will try to handle it the same way as others with a reproducible product - I'll post up how many I have, and will sell them on a first come, first serve basis.
I finished doing an inventory of the fasteners that Rodney included with everything I got from him.
The great news is that about half of the various fasteners needed I have, and have enough of to cover the remaining Rodney adapters.
I then used his hand written notes, and my remaining fastener (weld-on) kit I had from my original purchase of kits from him to make sure I was reading everything right. Took measurements of the length of the fasteners, put them all into my project book, and then ordered the fasteners I didn't have. Again this is focusing on the weld-on kit right now, though I did inventory the u-nuts that he included as well. That part will be done when I go to figure out and what I need for the clip-on setup.
I finished the modifications to 4 sets of motors today. I did see another quality difference between the Chinese motors and the US/Mexico units. The Chinese ones only use 3 little 'tabs' to hold the cap on the face (gear side) of the motor, the US/Mexico units use 6. I also noticed that it *appears* in addition to shaving down part of the rim around the cap, Rodney was using a tool to tap/fold a bit of that edge (at the trim start/end points) over to reinforce the cap. So I did the same on all the motors I modified today.
I ran power through them all, no issues with operation, granted that's without load. I'm going to see what I can do to setup a test rig somehow to test the motors with an appropriate load. I really want to make sure I offer you guys the best product with the best Q.C. that I can figure out how to do.
Once the fasteners I need show up, I'll start bagging them up into kits and mounting the motors on the Rodney adapters. Then I need to figure out how to do the load testing. Once that's done, I'll be ready to sell weld-on setups!
If anyone has any suggestions on something I can put together to test this, please let me know. I do have a passenger side window actuator in my garage, but no spare door, so not sure how that would work, and it's only one side. Maybe I can attach a band to an appropriate weight (2.5 lbs? Since the window has that assist spring in normal operation?) and test the motor in 'winding up' the band with the weight in both directions.
I have finished putting together 4 sets, including bagging up the fasteners and pigtail extensions and crimp butt connectors with heat-shrink.
I have the fasteners for both the U-nut and weldon. My u-nut kit will not include the 'stepper' drill bit that Rodney's kit did.
I have tested all the motors that I've prepped. I have not had a chance to do a reinstall to create my own documentation of the install. Rodney has been kind enough to leave his instructions up on his site for the time being, so please refer to his site for install instructions.
While I think it's mentioned there, one of the things we did to ensure the adapter was marked right and nuts welded on in the right spots, we marked the end of the stand offs with a little RTV (I think it was RTV), then pressed it to the window regulator to mark where we would drill out necessary holes. Once that was done we cleaned the holes, then fastened the adapters to the regulator using the nuts. Mike did a tiny spot weld on two sides of each nut. We then unbolted the adapter, and finished welding the nuts. This ensured the nuts would be on point and not need to worry about something being misaligned just enough to cause problems.
I've got 3 more sets about half-way done. Yesterday was a productive day, after multiple weekends of looking at my setup and Rodney's jigs and making adjustments, I finally found a good setup and workflow that has made things a little quicker for me to prep the motors.
I've had a few PMs from people who were interested, so I've PM'd them. If you are interested in a set, please sent me a PM. I will not take payments unless I have a set ready to ship. Once I have this first set of 4 sold and I get feedback from the users, I'll start a sale thread in The Mall.
