good morning youtube so while i was working on refurbishing these door handle
bezels here one of the other problems i decided i needed to fix was the power window switch
because you can see nothing happens here in fact the switch just kind of flops around and
it's actually broken off here this is in my 1985 toyota 4runner and these are the factory
power window switches and i've had trouble with the passenger side switch since i purchased the
truck and probably 20 years ago i made a repair to this and the problem with these switches
is the way they're constructed there's this bezel on the outside where the rocker is
and then behind the door panel is the guts of the switch it has all the springy brass contacts and
then this rocker pushes on those brass contacts and so in inside here you've basically got a
double pole double throw switch and the way this switch is held together
there's two screws that come in to the plastic from behind and the problem is
when you push the rocker switch down to push those contacts closed you're pushing against
those two screws and and those screws just go into plastic they're just self-tapping screws so let me
get this apart and i'll show you what it looks like inside okay i got the switch out of there
and kind of as i expected the thing basically exploded when i tried to take it apart so you've
got this piece is stuck behind the door panel it has these four tabs that hold it back there
and then you've got these two screws here the plastic has broken off there that that one was
screwed into and this one was still screwed in and that was the repair i did probably 20 years ago
what i did was i filled this whole piece with some epoxy resin and then i used a dremel on a little
holder to sort of mill out the plastic here you can see where i kind of milled out a slot there on
each side just so that everything could go back together in fact this broke off the side there
that piece broke off the way this works is this rocker sits inside here so basically as you push
the rocker in you're pushing this back and putting tension on those screws and
they just rip out of the plastic and this plastic is just so brittle after 35 36 years
that it just falls apart yeah i was thinking i might try to duplicate the repair that i did
20 years ago but seeing the the condition that this is in i don't think that was a possibility
so i found a company called switch doctor that sells new switches so i just finally got this in
the other day it's got the same six position five pin connector this one it's a much better design i
don't know if this is a later model toyota switch i don't know if that's a part number on there
but uh anyway this switch is a much better construction it still has these four
tabs so you push it through the hole and then fold the tabs over but it has physical clips
here on both sides there's two clips holding the whole switch together there's no screws involved
and it's a really nice click action switch so i think what i'm going to do is i just want to
first plug this in and see if it works here okay so i've gone and plugged the switch in
i don't know which way is up oh that's down okay so it has to go like this
all right it works so yeah that's down it is a little bit different than the original it
has this extra trim ring around there really reasonable price on the switch you know when i
saw the price of a new switch i figured it's not worth my time to even think about repairing this
and after i took it apart it's like there's no repairing this for a while i was thinking well
maybe i could 3d print a new one of these and then maybe put some better screw holes in there
maybe even go through have a screw that goes all the way through with a nut on it or something but
the amount of time to design something like that versus the cost of a new switch it just didn't
make sense at all the switch pictured on their web page is that black color
and there's no option to choose a color when you order this so that was one reason i decided to use
paint to repair these door handle bezels because i can paint that switch housing as well with
the same paint and so now this and this will be the same color and i'll get rid of some of this
other plastic that's you know faded these window switches are all mechanical there is what they
call a power window relay up in the kick panel i showed you that in the flasher video in the
85 forerunner all the power window relay does is it turns on power to the power windows when the
ignition key goes to the accessory position i just bypass that relay took the relay out
and then just jumper the 30 and 87 terminals together so that there's power all the time
the wires come from the power window relay that's down in the kick panel area they come up to that
switch there and there's a double pole double throw switch and then the wires go back through
the door across the dash then the wires come into the door into this switch and then down
to the power window motor so the passenger side window has a lot of wire to run that
power through so one of the problems is if you use the switch on the driver's side the power window
motor is a little bit weaker because it's got all that extra wiring to go through versus if
you switch it right here it tends to have a little more power so i scuffed it up with a scotch brite
pad until all the gloss was gone gave it a coat of paint and then a second coat after that dried
and that pretty much covered everything and then i hit it with scotch brite again smoothed it down
and put a third coat on i just want to give it a fourth coat here because this part here is
going to be subject to wear you know every time you hit the button you're going to be
touching this so i figure i'll give the outside a fourth coat and you can see there it's a little
bit shiny and it just takes a little bit like that and you just knock the gloss off of there
and just work around the four sides so i've got the switch painted paint's drying so probably
put that on in the morning but i need to roll the window up here overnight and the interesting thing
i found is the window will not work without this switch plugged in even from the driver
side if you don't have something plugged in here it won't work because all the signals from the
driver's side switch come through and come over to this switch they're not independent both these
switches the driver side switch and the passenger side switch actually wired in series but you can't
operate it without the rocker you can see that's the switch that the rocker pushes right there
there's the normally closed contact and then the normally open is down on the bottom then
same thing here so that's the lower contact normally closed is on top the normally open
contacts on the bottom and then this wiper is in between okay we've got the switch installed
this morning so i gave it a total of four coats of paint and let it set up overnight
and then what i did was hit it with a scotch brite pad just to knock off some of the sheen
to get it in what i found was you have to bend the wires back so they point straight out and then
push the switch housing through the opening there and then you bend the tabs over to hold
it in place and then fold the wires back down so that it lays flat back here because there's
not a lot of room behind the switch this switch has a little bit longer cable coming off of the
switch than the factory one so you kind of have to loop it around under there and then get all
the push rivets back in and yeah it works really nice you can go clear to the top and the bottom
see if you found that helpful give the video a thumbs up and as always thanks for watching