A full week of rainy days was a strong motivator to fix our passenger side window.
Most of the Z appears to be held together with plastic clips.
First, we removed the armrest and grab bar. They were held in with a few bolts and clips.
Our favorite tool is an iPad, as it displayed an excellent tutorial on my350z.com.
Like most modern cars, the 350Z has a metal inner door panel that holds most of the window and lock mechanisms.
Before going any further, we taped our window to the door itself. This way, we didn't have to deal with a heavy, unsupported piece of glass.
We then removed the inner door panel and found our broken window motor.
It wasn't hard to get to, but it sure was awkward to work with.
We did eventually get the old motor unbolted from the carrier, though.
The new and old motors looked the same, and installation was simply the reverse of removal.
Our Z has automatic windows, which meant that the system needed to programmed after the new motor was installed. We did this with the help of the window motor reset switch, and another excellent tutorial on my350z.com.
Once our window was working properly, we found another problem. The previous owner installed a nice set of Alpine speakers, but their magnets interfered with the window glass. We'll address this (and the rest of the car's stereo problems) in our next update.
Both doors held both good and bad surprises.
In our last update, we ordered a new passenger-side window lift motor for our 2003 Nissan 350Z. After only a few days, it arrived, so we went to work. Both doors held both good and bad surprises, but nothing we hadn’t dealt with before on other project cars. With the help of a tutorial on My350z, we didn’t have any issues replacing our window motor, but we did encounter some issues with the previous owner’s modifications. At the end of the night, we had two working windows. Next time, we’ll tackle the botched stereo installation.
What was the biggest surprise? It was how light every component was. We had expected to find extra weight all over the place, but every piece we touched was on par with any other modern car. In fact, the door panels were so light that we were picking them up with only a pinky finger.
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It's surprising how small the power window lift motor is for newer cars. How much weight does a manual window equipped car actually save when picking one for racing 70-80 pounds?
Interested to know more about the PO of this car - seems to by the typical poorly modified horror story. Good starting point though.
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