'58 Window Problems

[YellowRose]

greyfrontier is in need of some assistance with his '58 Tbird. This was posted down in the Welcome section, so I moved this part of it up here into the Squarebirds Forum for ya'll to read and help him with...

"My bird has too much glass on the driver side and not enough glass on the passenger side so i need some help. i was in a parade and decided to lower the windows as i approached the judges stand (looks more better with windows down) and passenger side responded to electrons and dutifully went down. hit button for driver side and driver window made and effort and died. same with quarter panel window. tried to raise passenger side and they had joined their soul mates in quite repose and refused to move. indications of a blown fuse, right? Ah Ha! where is fuse panel on 58? ain't none i can find. have found three fuses. one in light switch. one hanging in a fuse holder. and a tiny buss type that i don't know what it does. have been told by bird restorers that 58's used fuse links instead of fuses. have looked for pregnant wires without success. does anyone have any idea on where i should start to try to find the problem. please help bring harmony again to the grey-
frontier household getting my windows to come to life again. ulterior motive in all of this. i want to park the bird in front of the chevy dealership that sponsors our corvette club (91 convert) at our next meeting and show them what a real classic car looks like. had a 58 before in 1960."

[JohnG]

First, I own a '58. Secondly I do not have power windows. Third, I have never worked on them. This makes anything I say somewhat suspect...

What I do have is a 1959 Shop Manual (gift of someone driving by my house...).

In Part 10-3 it says the Power Windows have 5 circuit breakers protecting them, and one main relay.

In Group 13 it goes into depth on these, telling me that

* circuit breakers for front motors are under the instrument panel and grounded through a mounting bolt

* circuit breakers for the rear quarters are mounted to the floor panel and gound through a mounting bolt (so under
the seat ??)

* there is one main "electric window relay" which goes to the battery terminal of the starter relay on one side and has a 30 A breaker on its other side. This appears to be mounted on the air intake duct under the left side of the instrument panel.

all other (4) circuit breakers are 15A - one per motor.

I can scan in the 3 pages from the manual if someone sends me an email address that accepts attachments.

Basically you would start from the front and see if anything at all works and then narrow things down. If nothing works you hunt down that main relay and 30A breaker with a volt meter and look for power...

John

[GTE427]

* there is one main "electric window relay" which goes to the battery terminal of the starter relay on one side and has a 30 A breaker on its other side. This appears to be mounted on the air intake duct under the left side of the instrument panel.

To help clarify, the main relay is located on the firewall on the passenger side, just follow the yellow wire from the starter relay and the window relay will be at the end. The relay is larger than the common Ford relays such as a horn relay. The circuit bkr is mounted with it. If the car also has power seats, there is a second relay for the seats mounted with the window relay, the window relay is the larger of the two.

[vernz]

Ray,

The windows on my 59 worked sporadically or not at all. After quite a bit of detective work the problem turned out to be the switches on the console. I took them apart, taking care to keep track of orientation of jumpers that come off when the switches are disassembled, and cleaned the contacts. The window worked great after that.

Vern

[JohnG]

got some scanning done... please see

www.wpi.edu/~goulet/TBird/PowerWindows_59_wiring.pdf

sorry about the first page being a little cockeyed!!

John

[tmjsong1aolcom]

Power Windows

This is actually a simple system, but unfortunately there are lots of parts.
As stated earlier all the power for the windows goes thru the large relay on the firewall in front of the passenger side. Easy to get power to the windows as run a jumper from the lead on the pass side to the the wire running into the firewall on the pass side. The wire running to the drivers side and then thru the firewall enguages the relay when the key is turned on.
The hot wire is the one that runs from the starter solenoid on the firewall. If you have power serat as well it will be yeloow as noted, but if no power seat it is usually black. Please note I am talking about 58's.

Each window motor is protected by a circuit breaker located as noted earlier.

The wire running thru the firewall on the pass side ends up at the window switches and powers the entire system.

As noted earlier the switches can also cause you headaches. Very easy to remove from console. Make sure power is off when removing bank of switches as a short across them will cause you more headaches.

There is no fuse in the system.

Ask ?? and will fill in as needed.

Good Luck
Fuz
58's&64's
Sun Prairie, Wi.
tmjsong1@aol.com