Steiger Performance - Jeep Cherokee Power Window Regulator Repair Kit

Steiger Performance Power Window Regulator Repair Kit
(For 1997-2001 Jeep Cherokee)

Let me guess... The driver and/or passenger power window in your Jeep Cherokee just made a snapping or grinding noise, and although you can hear the window motor humming, it no longer works, you can move the glass up and down by hand, and the glass wants to fall down into the door? If so, then please allow me to be the first to welcome you to the club!

The Problem

The front power windows in the 1997-2001 Jeep Cherokee are notorious for breaking in this manner. The problem is the design of the mechanism used to move the window. There is a bracket which is connected to the window, and it rides up and down in a track inside the door. There is a plastic/nylon piece attached to the bracket which serves as both a guide and also a means to connect the window motor to the bracket via a spiral wrapped cable (the "fuzzy cable") which acts similar to a worm drive. The bracket itself is constructed of 16 gauge stamped steel, it is attached to the window using two steel bolts, and the plastic piece is attached to the bracket using no less than 6 large steel rivets. So far, so good. However, the part that ties all of this together and bears the entire weight of the window is a small piece of plastic, no more than five hundredths of an inch thick! It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out where the point of failure is going to be!

(The window and bracket weigh in at just under six and a quarter pounds, and the "felt weight" is bound to be higher than that due to the friction from the track, the window rubbing against the felt and seal, etc. Of course, this is under perfect conditions. With some dirt or ice on the window, the pressures could be considerably higher. The window motor is capable of exerting more than 50 pounds of force, so if your window stops due to ice, jamming, or simply reaching the top or bottom of the track, this is the amount of force being transferred through the bracket!)


This is what the stock bracket looks like. The arrow is pointing to the plastic piece which connects the bracket to the power window motor mechanism.		And here is what the bracket looks like when that piece breaks off.

Using a questionable design as described above is bad enough, but to add insult to injury, the only option provided by Jeep to fix the problem is to replace the entire window regulator - guide rail, bracket, window motor and everything, most of which is perfectly functional! The problem is a broken piece of plastic which probably costs a few cents to produce, and the solution is to replace the entire regulator at a MSRP of $235? (Depending on the dealership, you may be able to get it for less, $120-180 or so.) There is something very wrong with this picture.

The replacement regulators now use a metal piece instead of plastic, which is a plus, but this isn't a whole lot of help to you unless you feel like forking out that kind of cash. Another option is eBay; I have seen used regulators going for around $85-140, and new regulators for $150-175. Of course, a used eBay regulator is almost certain to be of the original flimsy plastic design, the same as what just broke in your vehicle. How long it will will last is anybody's guess.

My Solution

I am far too cheap to spend that kind of money to replace a mechanism which still has the vast majority of its parts in perfect working order. Besides, its the principle of the thing - breaking a tiny piece of plastic should not mean that an entire $200 mechanical assembly is now junk! In my opinion, a better solution would be to simply replace the part that is actually broken, and that is exactly what this repair kit allows you to do.

The main component of the kit is a repair bracket that bolts to the stock window bracket and replaces the broken portion of the plastic piece. Essentially, it is a powdercoated steel bracket which the stock spiral cable can screw into. In order to install it, the regulator assembly is removed from the vehicle, two rivets are drilled out, and the broken portion of the plastic piece is cut off, which can be done with a utility knife. The replacement bracket is bolted into place (using the hardware included in the kit) which allows the cable to be inserted into it, same as stock. For more detailed installation information, please refer to the install instructions. These instructions are provided with the kit, and are also available on-line (see link below).

Click here to see the Install Instructions in Adobe PDF format

Click Here to read customer testimonials about this product

Lifetime Warranty

I stand behind my product and I want you to be happy with your purchase.

Each kit is warranted to the original purchaser to be free from defects in materials and workmanship for as long as you own the kit.

I am very careful during the manufacturing process and quality control inspection to weed out anything that could potentially cause a problem down the road. However, as is the case with any mechanical item, there is always a chance for failure no matter how controlled the manufacturing process may be. As such, should this repair kit break or prove unsatisfactory to you, please contact me and I will be happy to replace it or refund your purchase price. (In the event of a warranty claim, you will be responsible for the postage cost to mail the kit back to me, but I will cover the cost of shipping the replacement to you.)

Applications

This repair kit is for the 1997-2001 4-door Jeep Cherokee (the "classic" version, not the Grand Cherokee, which uses a completely different window mechanism. If you need a repair kit for your Grand Cherokee, a company by the name of Digital Tuning, Inc. makes one, you can check them out here.) This kit is ambidextrous; it will work on either of the front doors, so there is no need for a specific "left" or "right" version.

Following is some info which is applicable to 2-door Cherokees only (if you have a 4-door, you can ignore this paragraph): This kit was designed for the 4-door Cherokee. If you have a 2-door which has broken, this kit might work for you also. The 2-door has two regulator attachment points as compared to just one for the 4-door version. This repair kit is a basic bolt-on to fix one of those attachment points, and might be able to be used to fix the other attachment point, but that would require some fabrication. (So, whether this kit will work for you as-is depends on which of the two attachment points has broken in your 2-door.) For further information about this, please click here.

Related Tech Tip

The type of breakage which this repair kit is intended to fix is very common on the 1997-2001 Jeep Cherokees. There is also another type of failure which is quite common on these vehicles. What will happen with this other failure is that sometimes when you operate the window switch, the window won't move, and there will be a grinding or clicking sound coming from the door. Usually this happens when the window is in the full up or full down position. (For example, when using the auto down feature, when the window gets to the bottom, the motor might continue to run and grind instead of the switch popping back to the off position.) If this is what is happening on your Cherokee, and the window is still going up and down with the window switch (the glass hasn't fallen down into the door and you can't move it up and down by hand) then the plastic piece in your regulator hasn't broken, and my repair kit will not help you. However, here is a tip that you can use to fix your window for free.

Basically what is happening for this second type of failure is that the spiral cable inside of the window regulator has been worn down by the gear in the motor housing. (Sometimes the gear itself will also become worn, but usually it is just the cable itself.) This almost always happens at the full up and/or full down positions. What you can do is to dissasemble the regulator, pull the spiral cable out, flip it around and re-install it, "backwards", then reassemble the regulator. (Feel free to refer to the PDF installation instructions for my repair kit. Although the instructions are obviously geared towards installing my repair kit, they also show how to remove the regulator from the door and dissasemble it, so they may be useful to you.) Flipping the cable around like this causes a fresh section of the cable to be aligned with the motor gear while at the full up and full down positions. Almost always, this will solve the problem. However, in extreme cases, the gear itself might be worn down, or perhaps you will get to a point where flipping the cable around won't help because both ends are worn. In this case, what you can try is to "slot" the holes in the plastic portion of the motor housing such that when you assemble the motor housing, you can push the gear closer to the cable. Eventually, it may get to the point where you have used up all of the adjustment, in which case you are probably looking at purchasing a new regulator, or possibly scavenging a new spiral cable from a junkyard, but these tips usually do work, and should give you some more years of service if your regulator has failed in this manner.

Just to clarify, this tech tip that I have described has nothing to do with the plastic piece which breaks inside the regulator; my repair kit is not designed to fix this "stripped spiral cable" problem, I simply include this information here because this problem is also common on these vehicles, and I thought it might be helpful to someone who stumbles across this product listing while searching for a solution to their Cherokee's window problem. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me.

Note: The SP12001 kit will repair one window (either the left front or the right front). The SP12002 kit is exactly the same except it comes with a pair of brackets and the necessary hardware to be able to fix both front windows, instead of just one.

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Steiger Performance Power Window Regulator Repair Kit (For 1997-2001 Jeep Cherokee)

Steiger Performance Power Window Regulator Repair Kit
(For 1997-2001 Jeep Cherokee)