Still burning coolant, but I'm still driving it to work a few times a week. Last week the Saab was down waiting for brake calipers, so the 7 was my DD again. My guess is that the coolant is only leaking when the engine is cold; once everything warms up & expands, the hole closes up & it seals again. I've had to add coolant about once every 3 days of driving. A rebuild is in the future, as soon as I get this garage!
Anyhow, over the long weekend, I finally had enough of the driver's window regulator failing repeatedly. Time to retrofit the one I bought for a '97 Accord Coupe. I originally picked this specific car as the donor since it had longer doors & likely heavier window glass to fill them, the door height looked similar to the 'vert for packaging the window track & motor in, and in general the layout & details looked very similar, just newer. Also - $35 for the whole assembly & they're still widely available, unlike the ones in the 'verts.
The Accord regulator is laid on top of the RX-7's; The track itself is slightly longer while the sheathed part of the cables is slightly shorter for the Accord.
The accord uses a pulley wheel in the top guide while the RX7 doesn't, but the accord's guide points the cables further downward which would interfere with the front window stop in the RX7's door. The lower cable guide (black on Accord, white on RX7) in both window guide assemblies is the same exact part, so I used the newer one.
The basic idea was to reuse the whole window guide assembly from the RX-7 and retrofit the motor, cable, & cable sheaths from the Accord onto it. The motor & cable orientation is very similar, but the mounting plate on the Accord's motor sticks off the wrong side - easy enough to fix since it's just screwed on using some of the 4 holes in the regulator housing.
The accord's regulator & winding spool is 1-piece, which does not allow you to adjust the tension. The RX-7's is 2-piece which makes rebuilding & accounting for different cable lengths a little easier. No problem, we'll just need to measure & cut the cable to the right length, and possibly shim it at some point if necessary (of course it will be necessary...). I decided to use the new Accord cable sheaths, which meant I needed to cut 34mm off of both ends of the cables after mocking the whole assembly up. I cut this off of where the cables would attach to the window guide, since I still needed to add the rectangular washers & crimp/pound on new flat cable-stops to go into the RX-7's window guide.
There we go!
I had hoped to mount the motor in the same spot, using the same holes as the original. Things looked promising since I could pretty easily flip the Accord's mounting plate, drill 1 hole & cut off 1 stud. Then using a creative combo of longer bolts, nuts & washers, you could create the same bolt pattern as stock while keeping the motor and cables in approx. the same spot.
Things were looking promising... until that bit about the accord's cable sheaths being shorter reared its ugly head. With the window guide in-place, the motor could not reach the original mounting spot - it seemed to need another 3" or so of cable & sheath length. Well, we've come this far, lets at least see if it works & holds up well, so time to make some new mounting holes. The motor fit pretty well between the inner door panel & the front window track (between the fixed & sliding windows), slightly below & forward of where the inner door handle is. 3 holes later (well, 4... oops) and it all bolted up & seems to work great! Its faster than the passenger's side, seems very consistent going up & down, and doesn't appear to catch on anything. No pictures of the new mounting location - I must have been excited enough that I forgot to take them.
Wiring-wise, both motors had a thick green & thick red wire - I just matched the colors and soldered the RX7 connector onto these two wires coming off of the Accord cable. The Accord has 2 more thinner wires - possibly a switch for reaching the end of travel (or when the motor stalls) to cancel auto-down or auto-up window relays? I didn't test these. Works like a charm!
I'll call that a victory!
