The passenger side window on this 1981 Monte Carlo was getting painfully slow and the motor was showing its age. It’s only 40 years old and has been moving these windows for a long time. It’s time to fix that! I’ve picked up a new window motor from RockAuto to replace the aging one. In a previous video, I had the door panel off the drivers side to adjust the window. If there’s any issues with your window fitment, now is a great time to address that while the door panel is off.
The factory used mainly pop rivets to put these doors together, if you start seeing nuts and bolts, it means someone has been in there before. That’s the case with this one, a large number of the rivets had been removed and replaced.
To gain access to the motor there are 3 bolts, one is exposed and the other two have dimples that you can see roughly where the bolts would be that hold the window motor up. Those are where you will want to use a hole saw and make a hole big enough to get a socket in there. ¾ or 1” is plenty big for this job. Once that is done, with the window down, you can sneak the old motor out, transfer any hardware from the old one to the new one and get ready to replace the motor. I used some grease to help lubricate the gears and whit lithium grease is a good choice for all of the other moving parts. While you’re in here, it’s a good idea to lube everything up nicely.
Once the new motor is hung, test it before you put the door panel back on. There is nothing worse than replacing a part and finding that it doesn’t work after you put it all together.
This is the same process for all of the 1978-87 G Body cars, the Malibu, Monte Carlo, El Camino, Caballero, Regal, Cutlass and Grand Prix. This is easily done in an hour or two and can greatly improve the enjoyment of your car!
Link to the window adjustment video
Here’s links to some of the things used in this video. These may be affiliate links and I may receive a small commission at no cost to you.
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