Bottom tabs on door glass installed incorrectly
Posted: February 6th, 2009, 9:49 am
I don't do a lot of installing anymore, but my daughter's car got broken into the other day so I replaced the rear door glass in her 96 Nissan Altima. Actually one of my employees installed it, but I ended up getting involved as the part did not fit correctly.
After putting the glass in place Shawn noticed that the tabs on the bottom of the glass did not line up properly with the bolt holes in the regulator. In fact they were about an inch off. The tabs had been pre-installed but were in the wrong location! I had Shawn pull the glass and discovered that not only were the tabs in the wrong location, but that they were of the universal variety and the front tab was longer than the one on the original glass, so even if the tabs had lined up properly the glass would have tilted back and would not have gone up and down in the window channel without binding. This could damage the felt in the channel, the glass, and the regulator.
In the good old days these parts did not come with pre-installed tabs so I never had this problem. We either reused the old tabs or bought new ones from the dealer, but we did not use generic parts. Also I used epoxy to install tempered parts into channels and tabs, and the original parts on this Nissan were installed that way as well, but the part I purchased this time was installed with urethane, rather sloppily I might add.
I could not find another new window that day and could not get the tabs off without risking breaking the glass, so I ended up getting a used part from the wrecking yard. The used part had the right tabs and they were correctly placed so the installation took only a few minutes, but we wasted over an hour screwing around with the new part that we had purchased originally.
Has anyone else experienced this problem?
After putting the glass in place Shawn noticed that the tabs on the bottom of the glass did not line up properly with the bolt holes in the regulator. In fact they were about an inch off. The tabs had been pre-installed but were in the wrong location! I had Shawn pull the glass and discovered that not only were the tabs in the wrong location, but that they were of the universal variety and the front tab was longer than the one on the original glass, so even if the tabs had lined up properly the glass would have tilted back and would not have gone up and down in the window channel without binding. This could damage the felt in the channel, the glass, and the regulator.
In the good old days these parts did not come with pre-installed tabs so I never had this problem. We either reused the old tabs or bought new ones from the dealer, but we did not use generic parts. Also I used epoxy to install tempered parts into channels and tabs, and the original parts on this Nissan were installed that way as well, but the part I purchased this time was installed with urethane, rather sloppily I might add.
I could not find another new window that day and could not get the tabs off without risking breaking the glass, so I ended up getting a used part from the wrecking yard. The used part had the right tabs and they were correctly placed so the installation took only a few minutes, but we wasted over an hour screwing around with the new part that we had purchased originally.
Has anyone else experienced this problem?