Preventative repair (door/window)

[guyonabuffalo]

Hi folks,

Havent posted anything in a long time. Just reading and learning from the more informative threads. I wanted share a recent experience that might be of relevance to some of you; especially those new to W123 cars.

I replaced the front door seals about 1 year ago and they have been excellent. However; something I always neglected were the door catches. Thought, seals are good now, I ll worry about the catches later. I always just slammed the door shut telling myself "I ll do those later". Mind you, sometimes this was extremely annoying as I would have to open and slam the door a couple of times for it to actually catch.

My car has always had window regulator issues, like coming off track or jamming, so I decided to just get rid of the electric windows and convert to manual. This worked really well for the past year or so. A couple of days ago, on the way home at night, my window wouldnt go up past 4-5 inches from the door, there was an obvious "clicking" as I wound the crank handle, until it would stop.

Obviously I took the door panel off and removed the entire mechanism and the spring popped out. Looked like the metal pieces where the spring sits had bent out a little, allowing it to wiggle within as I operated the windows and eventually pop out. I thought I could use some pliers and strength to bend it back to original specs but ended up breaking a piece. Now there was nothing to hold the spring in place.

Anyway, all this got me thinking why I always kept having window problems.

Answer: slamming the door all the time. My car doesnt have a/c and I live in SoCal. To avoid creating an oven, I sometimes close the door with the windows open a couple of inches. This obviously rattles everything (I know, I am an idiot). Considering that I have to do this numerous times every day, I feel like this slamming behavior contributed to my persistent window issues.

So, yesterday I found my electric window parts (which I thankfully didnt sell or throw away) and now have reverted to one power window on the drivers door. Then I replaced the door catch with a new one and adjusted it to make sure the door closes easy. Now it feels like a new door, closes fully with a soft nudge or even on its own weight. Sounds amazing too. I made sure to tighten all the bolts and adjustment screws on the window regulator. Now the window works and moves nicely (albeit slower than a new car window). Hopefully, not having to slam the door anymore will result in longer window regulator life and less problems overall.

Fingers crossed but I am hopeful. I will try to post a video of the door closing. If you are considering doing this, I strongly advise you to do this replacement. Totally worth it.

If anyone else has a similar story of one potential repair causing other problems, please contribute.