Brought to you by 1AAuto.com, your source for quality replacement parts and the best service on the internet. Hi, I'm Mike Green. I'm one of the owners of 1A Auto. I want to help you save time and money repairing and maintaining your vehicle. I'm going to use my 20+ years experience restoring and repairing cars and trucks like this to show you the correct way to install parts from 1AAuto.com. The right parts installed correctly, that's going to save you time and money. Thank you and enjoy the video.
In this video, we're going to replace the driver's side regulator on this '98 Explorer, same as any '91 to '01 Explorer. This procedure is similar for all doors, although there will be some slight differences for the rear doors. Tools you'll need are a Phillips screwdriver, a hammer and punch, a drill and small to large drill bits, 10 and 11 mm sockets and ratchets, painter's tape or any type of that you want to use to hold up your window, bolts and locknuts to replace your rivets and a regular screwdriver.
We're going to speed through taking the door panel off. You can probably gather enough just by the fast motion. It's basically a few screws and then use a putty knife or door panel clip tool to pry out the door panel, as well as take off the mirror switch, which we just did there. Then the door panel comes off.
The window doesn't always break in the exact right position you need to get it out. Say your window breaks when it's all the way down or down right there. What are you going to do? Basically, what you're going to do is the new regulator comes with this whole track, so you're just going to break this part and then you're going to get the other one to a place where you can reach in. You have to take your speaker off, but you can break these things and then free the window, tape the window up and get the regulator off. That's what I'm going to do.
What I have here is a punch and a hammer. What this punch is going to do is when I hit it real good right here, it's going to put a little dot and that's where I'm going to drill into. If you try to start drilling on just a flat surface, the drill bit will walk all over the place. If you put a little divot in it with a punch, then it's a whole lot easier to drill into. We'll start with the drill and a small drill bit. I'm going to change to a larger drill bit with a 3/16 drill bit. This should be big enough to take off what I need to take off. You can see right there how that's drilled out. I'm now going to take a larger 1/8 bit.
To separate the regulator from the door, you need to drill out these three rivets. The first step to that is using a punch and you want to place it right in the middle of the rivet, then you want to give a good rap with your hammer, which knocks the middle of the rivet right out. Now you have a 5/16 drill bit and these rivets are nice and soft, so you can just press it right in. Once you have those three rivets, you want to remove these three nuts, one, two and three. They are 11 mm. I unbolted these and I let the window slide down. I want to get the regulator off. Just tap it right there.
Just a quick note, if your window breaks in a precarious position, you could perform the step that I just did, which is drilling out the rivets, loosen up the regulator, and then move the window and regulator around so that you can get to other spots that you might need to drill out. At this point, or even before, you can unplug the window motor, which is this plug right down here. Just use a little screwdriver to help you pry up this little tab and then pull the connector out.
You can see that I was able to raise my window up and tape it up with some painter's tape. Now I can see right in. Just like on the regulator to the door rivets, I want to punch these rivets out, this one right here and this one right here. Punch them out and drill them out and then I can pull the regulator right out.
We ran into a problem here. This rivet started spinning, so what I'm doing is I'm reaching in with a screwdriver and holding the rivet with a screwdriver. You can see right in there. There's my screwdriver. Stick it right under the rivet to keep it in place while you drill it. When this happens, you want to be really light with your drill. If one of your rivets is stuck, you can work a screwdriver right up in between, behind the track and the window. You'll want to remove your inside door handle, which is removed with two Phillips screws.
Then there's a little clip back here that you have to unclip and the handle comes right off. Then the regulator comes off. Obviously, the old regulator and the new regulator from 1A Auto. Everything's all the same. It has the stud here to help you get it in. It includes this integrated bracket here and it's going to plug in the same. You're going to bolt this all back together. Make sure these holes, the rivets are all cleaned out of them. I'm going to put the bolts through that way and bolt them on. The same thing with the regulator. I'm going to put them through the regulator and then through the door. I'll reinstall it like that.
Take your regulator, snap it into the door. If you want, you can hang this right here. I'll put these bolts on a little bit to hold it in place. You can actually grab the stud and the regulator and put it up through right there. You can thread this bolt on. Pull your mechanism up here and hold it up until you have your regulator bracket where you want it. At this point, make sure your harness isn't bound up anywhere. Bring it up. Plug it in. Now I'm going to tighten up these three 11-mm bolts first. The bolts I used are 10-mm, so I've got the 10-mm wrench and socket and ratchet. I use locknuts on these bolts. Snug these up first and then I'll tighten them afterwards.
Now I've got my regulator bolts in and I can move it up in place here. Reach right up in here and put this bolt in and then using an extension of a socket, put this nut in its place and then tighten them up. You can see I removed the tape. Everything works good. You can put this back on and press it on. The door handle. Bring the rod back down. What you want to do is put the handle on and then this clip goes over and clips onto the rod. Put your handle in and use a little bit of force to slide it back. If your water shield has lost some of its stickiness, you can use some tape to get it to stay.
We're going to speed through the rest of putting the door panel back on. If you want to see this in regular motion, just check out our other video for Explorer door panel removal and replacement and we hope that helps you out.
We hope this helps you out. Brought to you by www.1AAuto.com, your source for quality replacement parts and the best service on the internet. Please feel free to call us toll free at 888-844-3393. We're the company that serves you on the internet and in person.