power window electrical problems blow my mind! need help!

[Wilcox]

ok so long story short, my passanger window didnt work so i did some probing with my multimeter and "proved" that it was the motor. so i ordered a new motor and installed it and it still didnt work. so i got my jumper box ( other sorce of power ) and some aligator leads and "jumped" the motor. both the new and the old motor work when supplied power that way. so i did some more probing, ( when the key is on and either switch is used 13.56 is shown on the multimeter at the clip to the window motor ) this really threw me for a loop because my multimeter was telling me that both the master switch and the passanger switch supplied full battery power to those terminals at the clip DIRECTLY to the window motor. so why didnt it work? i destroyed the plastic clip and manually connected the wires so we cant blame it on bad connection. i had the thought that i might not have enough amperage? but im not sure. any questions, and ideas are greatly appreciated!! i just want my window to work

 

[Dirgle]

The switches, switch both power and ground. So even if there is 12V at the motor there might be a fault with the ground circuit.

A few questions.

1. You're sure the window lock switch on the driverside door is not engaged?(sorry, have to ask)

2. Does the window fail to go up or down or both?

3 Do both switches fail to operate the window, driver and passenger side?

4. Have you had either the driver or passenger side kick panels off for any reason lately.

 

[Backlash2032]

Back probe the connectors to see if you have voltage when you're trying to roll them down. Something tells me you won't. When you don't have that voltage, do a drop test.

Sent from my HTC Droid DNA

 

[Wilcox]

so right now my passanger window is completely torn apart. the window motor is out of the car. and yes both passanger and driver side switches work because it shows full voltage on the meter when i use either one. one side is up and one side is down, the meter will show voltage nomatter witch switch is being used. and prior to me taking everything apart my passanger window was autistic as f*ck, lol. it would work sometimes on rare ocasion and if you did get it to roll down you would have a heart attack trying to get it to roll up.

 

[Wilcox]

Back probe the connectors to see if you have voltage when you're trying to roll them down. Something tells me you won't. When you don't have that voltage, do a drop test.

Sent from my HTC Droid DNA

yes! when i plug the window motor in i have like " . 005 " on the meter, when i disconnect the motor it goes back to 13.56 . its almost like the motor is just sucking up the power and not acutally working? idk but its weird.

 

[YotaCrawler]

your contacts are probably f*cked. mine is hit or miss, so i'm going to re-wire the switches to completely bypass the passenger switch, and work them both off the driver switch.

 

[Backlash2032]

yes! when i plug the window motor in i have like " . 005 " on the meter, when i disconnect the motor it goes back to 13.56 . its almost like the motor is just sucking up the power and not acutally working? idk but its weird.

Look up voltage drop testing. You have an area of high resistance causing a voltage drop. That is why your window motor doesn't work. The reason it only drops when you try to roll thr window down is because of ohms law.

Sent from my HTC Droid DNA

 

[hvyman]

YOu can take apart the switch and clean the contacts. Not hard esp if the door panel is already off.

 

[Wilcox]

your contacts are probably f*cked. mine is hit or miss, so i'm going to re-wire the switches to completely bypass the passenger switch, and work them both off the driver switch.

why would you do that if cleaning up the contacts on the switch is easy? im not sure what my problem is but im going to try cleaning up the swtich

 

[Wilcox]

Look up voltage drop testing. You have an area of high resistance causing a voltage drop. That is why your window motor doesn't work. The reason it only drops when you try to roll thr window down is because of ohms law.

Sent from my HTC Droid DNA

do you think that it is my passanger switch? it doesnt make sense that the meter shows full power at the terminals when disconnected but as soon as i plug it in it wont show jack...... and that is directly at the motor connection. its almost like there isnt enough " pressure " to force the power through the wires.

 

[YotaCrawler]

why would you do that if cleaning up the contacts on the switch is easy? im not sure what my problem is but im going to try cleaning up the swtich

i've already cleaned my contacts and it's still an intermittent problem. i'd rather splice some wires for free than buy a new switch for however much someone wants to rape me for.

 

[jetjock]

... it doesnt make sense that the meter shows full power at the terminals when disconnected but as soon as i plug it in it wont show jack...

It makes perfect sense. "Power" in the operative word here. You don't have any...

 

[Maple191]

do you think that it is my passanger switch? it doesnt make sense that the meter shows full power at the terminals when disconnected but as soon as i plug it in it wont show jack...... and that is directly at the motor connection. its almost like there isnt enough " pressure " to force the power through the wires.

Its obviouse you dont know the fundamentls of basic electrical. In order to see where the problem is you MUST test the system as if was in working condition I.E completely connected. Testing a connector unplugged tells you have power up to that specific point of the circuit on that specific wire. Howerver it does not tell you if there is high resistance on any part of the circuit including what your testing.
And the "pressure" you talk about is the Voltage. Voltage is know as the pressure behind and electrical current (Amps)

 

[Wilcox]

i've already cleaned my contacts and it's still an intermittent problem. i'd rather splice some wires for free than buy a new switch for however much someone wants to rape me for.

^^^ ha ha +1

 

[Wilcox]

Its obviouse you dont know the fundamentls of basic electrical. In order to see where the problem is you MUST test the system as if was in working condition I.E completely connected. Testing a connector unplugged tells you have power up to that specific point of the circuit on that specific wire. Howerver it does not tell you if there is high resistance on any part of the circuit including what your testing.
And the "pressure" you talk about is the Voltage. Voltage is know as the pressure behind and electrical current (Amps)

when it was described to me in shop class "amps" is the amount of current, and "voltage" is the pressure in the circut. my shop teacher described it as a hose. he said amps is the amount of water and voltage is the pressure of the water. i dont understand why it is showing full batery votage at the connection directly to the motor and then after i plug it in at the same point it is showing very little voltage. there is only 3" of wire between that connection and the motor, and the motor is new. no way it is freyed or messed up. so where could my problem be?

 

[3p141592654]

Ohms law, the missing link in your analysis.

 

[Dan_Gyoba]

Taking the hose analogy one more step.

When a wire is unplugged, think of the hose nozzle as being closed, there's nowhere for the water (current) to go, so if you read the pressure, it will read the full pressure in the line. It doesn't matter if you turn the tap on a little, or a lot.

Now plug it in. This is the same as having the hose connected to a sprinkler. There will be less pressure in the line, because it's being released through the sprinkler. If the tap is all the way open, you'll have more pressure. If it's only open a tiny bit, you'll have less.

Resistance in the line is the same. You'll get full battery voltage as long as there's continuity (And enough juice to power your voltmeter) regardless if there's resistance in the line. But connect it to the load, and you'll see higher voltage if the connection is good than you will if the connection is bad. In this case though, it's not the voltage referenced to ground that you care about, it's referenced to another point in the circuit. Before the "tap".

Every connector, switch, piece of wire or whatever will have some resistance. If you measure voltage from one point on the circuit to another (Like before and after the switch) you will get a voltage reading. The higher this voltage is, the more resistance there is across that part of the circuit. (The more "closed" the tap is.) You're looking for the closed tap in the circuit.

Ohms law is a series of equations which govern voltage, current and resistance where if you know 2, then you can determine the third.
Volts = V
Amperes = I
Resistance = R

V = I * R
I = V / R
R = V / I

There's also power in Watts, (I * V), but that's outside of the classic triangle.

 

[Wilcox]

its funny that you say that because i did some probing and thinking. i realized that it doesnt matter what my multimeter says, if i dont have enough amps to actuate the motor then it wont work, so inturn then i have a high resistance part in the circut. so first place to look is the passanger switch because everything goes through that switch. so i probed before and after and it was stupid how much it dropped. so i sanded them with 400 and put it back together and it worked! my quesstion is, how long unitl they get corroded agian? maybe i should just bypass the passanger switch like yotacrawler suggested?

 

[Wilcox]

so we now have some new problems....... i cleaned up the passanger switch and it worked but for only the passanger side, so thats about as pointless as not having it work anyway. i want to make it so just the master switch controlls the car. but im really lost here, there are 5 wires on the passanger side ( key power, up, down, driver up, and driver down ) the constant power wire wont make the motor work!!?? im so confused! if i take a jumper box and connect it up with leads the motor turns on, but it wont turn on by use of the blue key power wire. they both have the same voltage, but it wont work. so i just need to know what wires to splice together to just make the master switch work.

thanks, wilcox

 

[Backlash2032]

I will never understand why people don't fix things to factory specs. It can't really be called fixing in that case...

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