Bench Testing Power Window Motor

[Joe Johnston]

Before going to the trouble of disassembly and risking breaking anything, consider drilling a hole in the rear housing, on center. Small spout oilers, or pin oilers, are available or even use a toothpick to get a drop of oil on the shaft and bushing. Often this rear bushing gets dry or gummed up and the shaft won't spin easily. Since the motors are in an enclosed space the hole could be left open or you can seal the hole with what ever, epoxy, silicone, caulk, or seam sealer. If it didn't help, you can always take it apart. It saved a couple of heater fan motors and a seat motor for me.

[scumdog]

They actually have 4. Black, Green, Red. and Yellow.

I was going by the wires at the plug nearest to the motor, the one you have to unplug when taking the electric motor out.

The '66 shop-manual shows three wires at the plug,- yellow, red and grey (looked black on my car!)

[simplyconnected]

...window motors seemed to only have three wires...

They actually have 4. Black, Green, Red. and Yellow.

The short answer is, you're both right. As I said, Ford motors are not like most DC motors. They have different fields and are wired differently. Today's motors only have two wires because the fields are permanent magnet.

I will explain DC Motors (and Ford DC motors) in a different thread. It will take me a while to draw it out, so give me some time. - Dave

[60 T-Bird]

I guess I need to read up on electric motor theory and then just take one apart. It's all that strange terminology that's leaving me in the dust!

My window motors could be described as above: "slow and torqueless". I bet all they need is a good cleaning inside?

Ya...but you still have a bitchin lookin car!!!

[simplyconnected]

I put a few pages together and made a PDF file about DC Motors.

Please read through it and let me know what you think:

http://www.squarebirds.org/picture_gallery/TechnicalResourceLibrary/DC%20Motors.pdf

- Dave

[60 T-Bird]

I'm still not on the same page with the 3 wire thing. There are 4 wires coming out of the motor...not 3. I have check other motors online and they are also 4. Internally the connections are as follows:-
(Yellow wire) connected to the up side of one field winding with a black at the lower end of the field leading to a post connected to one of the brushes and then continuing out of the cast to a male terminal as the (Black wire).
(Red wire) connected to the other up side of the other field winding with a black wire at the bottom of that field to another post connecting the other brush, then a (Green wire) on that same post exiting the case to a male terminal.
I have bracketed the wires that exit the case only as to show the 4 wires. I think the armature and fields are excited at the same time and the magnetic field reversed through the switching on the console. That being said, I'm still struggling with why the black wire (or ground as is said) has to be connected last.

[Joe Johnston]

Great explaination. So if we:

1) ground the black wire and jump both the Green and Yellow wires to the pos terminal the motor should run one direction.

2) ground the black wire and jump both the Green and Red wires to the pos teminal the motor should run in the opposite direction.

Correct?

[60 T-Bird]

Great explaination. So if we:

1) ground the black wire and jump both the Green and Yellow wires to the pos terminal the motor should run one direction.

2) ground the black wire and jump both the Green and Red wires to the pos teminal the motor should run in the opposite direction.

Correct?

You got me...We need Dave to jump in here. He knows this magic of electrons...

[GTE427]

Dave,

Looks great. Thanks for pulling that together for all of our benefit.

[simplyconnected]

Ken, (GTE427) brought out some errors in my PDF file. That's what I get for being in a rush to ship it out ASAP. I hope I have corrected everything, so please revisit the same link to my PDF file.

I'm still not on the same page with the 3 wire thing. There are 4 wires coming out of the motor...not 3... ...I'm still struggling with why the black wire (or ground as is said) has to be connected last.

There is a big difference between model years in the way Ford power window motors are internally connected. This is where I must be careful because Full-size Ford cars kept the four-wire motors thru 1963. But in the same 1963, Thunderbird changed to the 3-wire motors.

3-wire motors are Series-Motors & because they are series, the order you connect the wires on a test bench makes no difference. (Driver's window):
Up Field (wire #313) Yellow
Down Field (wire #314) Red
Ground (wire #57) Black or gray resistance wire

4-wire motors are Shunt-Motors (Squarebird motors). Refer to my drawings to see there are two separate field windings, wouned in opposite directions. If you energize just the armature, there will be no motion. If you energize just the field, there will be no motion. If you energize both fields and the armature, again, no motion.

When you correctly energize a field and the armature at the same time, the motor will turn. This is easily done by connecting the ground wire LAST. Inrush current helps 'kick-start' this action because it produces more magnetism.

Great explaination. So if we:

1) ground the black wire and jump both the Green and Yellow wires to the pos terminal the motor should run one direction.

2) ground the black wire and jump both the Green and Red wires to the pos teminal the motor should run in the opposite direction.

Correct?

Yes, UP is yellow and green on POS, or DOWN is red and green on POS. Connect the black wire to NEG last, and you will see motion.

[60 T-Bird]

Ok....I think I have this now. Like Joe johnston stated...hook green and red wire to the "+" and then black wire to "-" and you will have one direction. The next test would be hook the green and yellow wire to the "+" and then the black wire to the "-" and it will rotate in the other direction.

[60 T-Bird]

Thought I would post the internals of the motors themselves. I the coming week or so I will go over with a step by step procedure of re-newing these. After that maybe someone else might chime in regarding the relays and switches...Martin

[YellowRose]

Bench Testing Power Window Motor

Hi Martin, You mentioned cleaning of relays and switches. Mike Gaffney gave us a great article on cleaning the window switches some time back. If you look in the Technical Resource Library and scroll down to Windows, you will find his article and pix on cleaning the windows switches. In fact, the TRL as we call it for short, is loaded with information to help you fix your Tbird. I often wonder how many are using it because the questions that often come up here are already covered in the TRL, in many cases... The link to the TRL is always found under my signature.. Thanks for the pix of the window motor. I will probably add those to the TRL also!

[simplyconnected]

These pictures are really good, Martin. Please take MORE!

Ray is right. Mike did a real nice writeup on the switches:

http://www.squarebirds.org/picture_gallery/TechnicalResourceLibrary/powerwindowswitches.htm

The power window motor & switch schematic kinda looks like this:

[YellowRose]

Power Window Motor Pix & Schematic

Thanks to Martin and Dave for supplying the information on our Squarebird power window motors and wiring schematic. You will find them on the TRL now. Just scroll down the page to Windows and you will find it listed there. But here is the direct link that I just put up.

http://www.squarebirds.org/picture_gallery/TechnicalResourceLibrary/WindowMotors.htm