Back in 2009 when I participated in the Tyler Project, I ended up hauling a bunch of stuff home that people left up at the shop in Frazee...
Some of those things were the original window switches which came out of Tyler's car, as all new switches were installed throughout the interior.
The old switches were in better condition than the ones in my 1986 SE, so I swapped them in for mine and ran with them for years. When that car passed on, I moved those switches into the new 86 GT, partially for the connection to the build and partially because they were better than the ones in the GT.
I'd rather save the switches than replace them, and today I hit my frustration peak with the windows being so slow, so I decided to rip the switches, clean, and rebuild them.
Follow along with a step by step... Images are hosted on Imgur so that they stick around for a while.
With the switches out of the vehicle, place them face down and notate the orientation of the switch electrical connection to the body of the switch itself. Once this is done, you can continue on.
Take a thin flat blade and gently insert it into the side of the switch at the center, above the pivot point, and pry the handle away from the switch, pushing in at the bottom of the center rocker to release the pivot point.
The side of the switch will lift up like so.
When you pry the second side up, it will pop out like this. You can now lift the rocker up and out from the body of the switch.
The arm at the bottom of the rocker slides into the slot down in the body of the switch and slides the contact slider. More on this in a bit. Note the spring in the body of the switch. This is under tension. The ends fit down into the slots on the ends of the switch, and the ring fits in the capture groove to keep it in place.
Note the arm on the rocker. The little rib to the side faces away from the spring when installed.
With the top of the switch removed, it's time to move on to the electrical side of things. You need to be gentle on this side so that you do not bend the contacts or bridges on the circuit board.
Repeat the process with the rocker side of things by gently inserting a thin flat blade between the edge of the board and the switch body. Do this on both sides, being careful to release the circuit board from the body gently. It is under spring pressure with some tiny parts.
Tiny parts...
Left: Switch body, plastic slider, contact tension springs in the slider.
Right: Rocker, circuit board/contact terminals, slider contacts. Note the keyed ends of the slider contacts. These sit on the plastic slider over the springs, with the pointy ends facing the top of the switch toward the rocker.
The long ends are placed toward the center of the slider during assembly.
Bottom of the slider contact. This needs to be cleaned.
Keyed end of the slider. The left edge, toward the thumb faces the outside edge of the switch, while the legs are toward the center.
The switch contact surface. 31 years of debris, spills, and old grease = this...
Time to break out the fun stuff...
Scrub all of the contact surfaces with an old tooth brush and some electronic cleaner. Scrub the contact sliders as well.
All cleaned up and greased.
Reassemble the slider in the body of the switch. Use a touch of dielectric grease underneath to hold the springs in place, and then insert the sliders over the top. They won't sit down perfectly, but if you gently push down on them, they will compress the springs and push down into the body smoothly. Let them rest, and line the electrical board up and snap into place.
Place one side of the spring for the rocker back into the hole in the body of the switch. Apply pressure to the other end of the spring to bend it down, and as you line the spring up with the groove in the switch, snap the other end down and the spring will drop into the groove. Snap the rocker back in place.
This helped add about 30% speed to the windows... Cleaning and greasing the tracks made them run almost like new on the original door motors.
YMMV
[This message has been edited by Synthesis (edited 07-15-2017).]
