Power Windows 71- 74 Javelin/AMX - How I did it

When it came time to work on my doors, I ended up tearing them down to the bone to fix all the rust and mechanical issues. Since I had gone this far already, I wondered how much harder it would be to drop in power windows. It turned out... not that hard. Here I've gathered all my info for doing the mechanical mods to share. *No changes to the door are necessary, so going back to stock is simple if desired. I also did not get in to the wiring and switch side of things here. The options are endless... from stock AMC hardware to and endless choice of placements and  switch selections. I plan to shop the local scrap yard to get ideas and hardware to do the final electrical setup. This is for front doors only. I've not gotten around to the quarters yet and not decided if I'll convert those or not. So here's the write up. I think this doc took about 4 times longer to finish than the mod itself, so I hope you find it interesting if nothing else.

** IMPORTANT SAFETY NOTE ***
** THESE REGULATORS ARE GALVANIZED AND WILL CREATE HARMFUL FUMES **
** IF WELDED.  FOR THE TINY BIT OF WELDING I DID, I GROUND AWAY THE ZINC **
** COATING AROUND WHERE I WAS GOING TO WELD,  WORKED OUTSIDE WITH  **
** A VAPOR MASK AND MOVED AWAY AFTER HTTING MY WELDS GIVING ANY **
** SMOKE TIME TO CLEAR BEFORE CONTINUING. SAFTEY FIRST. **

Pretty good article on the subject and there are plenty of others.....

http://www.sperkoengineering.com/html/articles/WeldingGalvanized.pdf

Back in 1993 someone in Chrysler's Jeep division did me a favor and secretly created  power window regulators for my Javelin doors. The unsung hero(s) at Jeep then cleverly disguised this part and installed it in the new Grand Cherokee that year so that no one at corporate was the wiser.  They successfully went on to make this part until the 1999 model year when the design was changed. But by then about 1.2 million Grand Cherokees had hit the streets. These kinds of numbers mean that this part is in good supply from auto stores, parts distributors and salvage yards. The picture you see below is the first one I brought home from the local yard for about $22. $2 more gets you a warranty, but this one looked in great shape so I didn’t bother. If you pull one from the junk yard SAVE THE BOLTS. Or you can just buy some 10mm*6 bolts to go along with the 10mm nuts needed to finish the mod anyway.

It's going to take removing the door panels, window glass and the stock manual window regulators to do this mod, so plan according for the needed tools and time it requires. You also need 4 10mm bolts and nuts to go along with the new regulator. Moding the donor regulator took about 4 hours on its own, so add that to teardown/assembly time for  the rest of the door. I also recommend  making  a template that will be needed for hole alignment while modifying the power regulator. The overall size of the template isn’t important, but the size and spacing of the hole placements is critical to a nice bolt up at the end of the project. Also make sure the holes are square with each other. I was able to use the door itself with the skin off for my work, this template should fill the requirement just as well without removing door skins.

 Now I’ll show how I peeled away the Jeep disguise revealing my Javelin power window regulator. 

First remove the upper and lower tracks. Bending up the small tabs at the end of the guides lets the rollers come right out.

Time to remove the extra scissor rail by drilling out these divited weld points with a 3/32 bit. There are 2 welds on each side. Get the first two, flip it over and hit the other two. When done the welds might still be holding on a bit. A few bends back a forth  and it should snap away. If not a bit more drilling might be needed.

Next we’ll mark where the bends need to go that match the stock window regulator. The bends are needed to clear the inside structure of the door near the top.

Take the measurement from the far edge of the regulator arm. NOT THE MIDDLE! Notice where I have the end of my tape measure. Slide up to the bent edge/end just there and make the 16 and 17 inch marks.

When finished, this is how the arm should look. How we get there is going to be up to your own tools and devices. I used a combination of small bench vise, large pliers and even wedging the arm between an opening in my engine hoist to bend this into the right shape. I think it easiest to make the 17 inch bend first, then the 16, then any adjustments after that to the final shape. You're going for roughly a 45 degree angle between 16 and 17

The end of the arm with the roller has to go. It interferes with the window movement. I’ve marked here now much to cut away. I took this off with a cutting wheel on my angle grinder then cleaned up the edges with a file. A hacksaw would work fine too though.

Marking where the roller needs to be mounted is next. I waited until this point for this step because the bending process will not be precisely the same for everyone. Drilling the mount hole then bending would surely lead to inconsistent placement of the roller since my bends and yours will never likely ever land exactly at 16 and 17 inches. Measuring can be done a couple of ways. I used a digital caliper to mark from the edge of the large hole to the drill point at 5-1/4 inches. If you don’t have a digital caliper handy, then use a tape measure to mark the same spot at 5-5/16 adjusting a bit for the angle of the measurement.

Here I show how I measured this drill location using the original regulator. With the door skin off, I marked where the travel of the arm stopped then carefully marked the hole center from top and side. (large imprecise globs of white out for photo clarity only). Then I mounted the power regulator, ran it up to the same position and marked the corresponding location on the power regulator arm, measured and drilled. This is where the 5.25 and 5-5/16 measurements come from.

Mounting the stock roller on the new arm is open to interpretation. Here I show how I used an over sized washer I had lying around to bolt the roller in place. Other sizes will work, or you may come up with your own idea for this part.  I’ll probably weld the washer in place just for good measure, but I’d not done that yet at the time of this write up and test run.

Now comes probably the trickiest part of the job. Marking, drilling and shaping the openings in the power regulator needed to mate up perfectly with the holes that were made for the stock regulator. When finished, there will be 2 additional mounting nuts added to the regulator for bolt up. The needed cuts are right at the fillet of the form so it adds a bit to the difficulty.

Here are the 4 stock bolt locations. 2 of them bolt right up, 2 don’t. I made marks on the power regulator for a rough idea of where to put the new holes. You can make your own marks either by bolting up the regulator inside the door as I did, use the template made from the drawing described at the beginning of this guide, or try to use my photos as a rough estimation of the location. The holes to be made don’t have to be perfectly aligned as there will be a bit of room for play and adjustment, but they need to be close so you don’t have to open up a hole bigger that the nut to be installed. A washer might be added if the hole operation gets carried away though.

I’ve made the marks and removed the regulator.

Using a punch to roughly strike the center of my mark and drilling the pilot hole. 3/32” bit.

Now drilling out with ¼ bit. Notice the angle I’m using while cutting in to the fillet area.
(dark blob is small magnet catching the fillings)

In the next several photos you can see how I’ve shaped the hole to accept the nut in the proper location. I used a combination of a dremel bit and small file to open and shape this cut until the nut fit flush and had a bit of room to move around for final alignment. When finished, the shaft of the bolt is going to ride very close or up against that flat surface of the regulator housing.

At this stage having the door skin off was a big advantage in working out this mod. But using the template mentioned at the beginning of the guide will allow for the same final and permanent placement of the mounting nuts the way I was able to do with the skinless door. So…at this point, either put the regulator back in the door, or mate it up to the template. Put the first two original bolt locations in loosely. Then position and put in the new bolts at the two new openings. Once the threads are started,  tighten up all four bolts. Snug down all 4 bolts, then hit each of 2 nuts with a couple of mig welds, RTV, JBweld or maybe just use lock washers ( pick your poison) to set them. Once I had the nuts welded on one side, I removed the regulator, flipped it over and added a couple more welds on the backside to make it all permanent.

A small remaining item… add a stop bolt to the gear rack. A stop is already installed on one side of the rack and Jeep conveniently predrilled the hole we need for the other side. Here’s the 5/8” bolt in place. A bit of lock tight on the threads here might be a good idea too.

Regulator mod is now done and bolted in the door.

The last thing to do was test its operation one more time. Here I’ve saved the switches and a bit of the harness out of the donor Jeep to test the window.

Until I can get a better video, you can see the low quality videos of the window working at these links.

http://s544.photobucket.com/albums/hh331/PlazinJavelin/Javelins/PowerWindow/?action=view&current=PowerWindow2.mp4

http://s544.photobucket.com/albums/hh331/PlazinJavelin/Javelins/PowerWindow/?action=view&current=PowerWindow3.mp4