Window regulators upgrade

Hello NSXPrime members!
This is actually my very first post in this Forum, I decided it was about time for me to give some contribution to this great community, so here it goes, hope you'll appreciate it and find it useful! :wink:

As I could check in so many topics, everyone seems to have slow windows and my NSX was no exception.
Like many others I removed the window tracks, cleaned everything with fuel and even lubed every part with a special nylon green grease extra resistant to water(usually used in boats), put everything back in place, even adjusted the windows...and they turned out to be just as slow as before!! I simply didn't notice any improvement at all, that was a real frustration considering all the messy work I had and all the time it took me.
So I decided to go further and focussed this time on the regulators to understand the problem
I found that the NSX was in fact the first Honda car to have "cable type" regulators, until then all Honda had "scissors type" ones, like the 3rd gen Prelude for example, so no wonder that this "beta version 1.0 device" could be a source of defects!


I suppose in 1990 at Honda's they were so busy with the VTEC system that no one really cared about the windows :biggrin:
Nowadays all hondas have cable regulators, so I got the idea to check what sort of evolution they got along the years to apply it to the NSX!
Like Doc said in Back to The Future "The way I see it, if you're gonna build something why not do it with some style", so I took an S2000 regulator and started my study from there.
I am sure that when Mr Honda had his vision of the S2000 for honda's 50years anniversary first thing he told was: "and I want fast windows this time, not the slow ones like 10years ago for the NSX" (...in Japanese of course :biggrin:

So here are the 2 regulators, the S2000 on the left and the NSX on the right, both driver side.

First difference I noticed is that there are 2 pulleys for the S2000, and no pulleys at all for the NSX! in fact the cable is doing a complete U-turn of 180º in the NSX with no pulley!


, and in the S2000 the cable is doing only 90 or 120º turn but uses a pulley!


So I decided to start my work there, so I took the pulley out of the S2000 and fit it in the NSX regulator, here's how I did it!

The pulley is somehow fixed to the regulator by pressure, the only way I thought I could fit it back somewhere else was to drill a hole in it, and fixed it with a screw passing through and a nut in the other side, so this is exactly what I did.

Fist step: drill a hole in prior to remove it.

Next step was to make a nut out the pulley axle, this will be need later to fix it and keep everything tight. I used the special tool that job of course


Then it was time to take the pulley out of the S2000 regulator! This is the fun part, just cut it, hammer it, twist it, bend it ...everything goes, Î simply had no mercy for the support but managed not to damage the pulley of course!







and finally here is the nut-pulley out:biggrin:

Next step is to remove the fixed plastic part form the NSX regulator.
You can remove the cable from that part using a screw driver or something else, but you will not be able to put it back in place again, you will always need to open the motor to loose the cables and tight them again!

So the best is to open the motor right away and loose the cable without any risk of damaging.

This part is not in the manual
In fact there is a rotary spring that will compress during the window opening, this will help to close it back and compensate the weight of the glass I suppose. so it is very important to open the motor IN FULL CLOSED POSITION (regulator completely up). If you open it in down or middle position the spring will jump out of there, full of grease, be very careful

So, put 12V into the connector to put the regulator in the upper position, and then you can open it.
With a screwdriver gently pry the 2 small parts

here is the rotational spring, just lift it and it will make just about 1 turn and 1/2, this is a pre-tension that will have to be applied during assembly of course!

then lift all other parts to loose cables

Now cable is loose, just pull it and the take the white plastic part out!

Now the question was: how and where am I going to fix the pulley in place of the white plastic part? First I thought of making a small part in aluminium, or use a big washer or something...but as I am lazy, I decided to use the white plastic part, after all it was already perfectly fitting!:wink:
So I cut if by the cable section and drilled it to fix the pulley, I will only need it as a support now!



some sanding...


some drilling again...


and here is the pulley and its new support






And finally the S2000 pulley in the NSX regulator





It is now 1.30am, so I'll continue it tomorrow!

Wow, now that is an impressive first post!! Can't wait to see the results!!
Nice job and thanks for the contribution.

Jeff

FANTASTIC STUFF! I've been needing something like this forever. Embarrassing to have a super nice car with windows that barely crawl up and down. Thank you good sir!

Very nice post.

when you put it all back together how much faster were the windows for this Mod? I mean was it all worth the time and effort you put into it? if it made the windows go up even a little faster then I think it was worth it. good job I have new ideas now.

Has anyone tried to increase the size of the motor or is that not the issue?

Jeff

So, as I see it you replaced the pulley on the bottom where the 180 turn is, but did nothing to the top where the 2 90's are. The outcome should be improved, but the S2000 has pulleys top and bottom. Thanks for all your work and please let us know the outcome. Happy Motoring!

Thank you all for your kind support!
The outcome is amazing, I will answer to Pigilliam1 in the end, first we must assemble the motor again :smile:

Now is the tricky part, the cables can only be stretched in the lower position, not the upper as the motor was opened!

So, by hand you must turn the motor rollers until the regulator goes to its full opened position, this is to roll up the lower roller with just one cable! The top roller will have now a very short cable and you will be able to tighten them!


Then you must fix the lower roller and turn the upper one in the opposite direction to tighten the cables.



This is a delicate job, if you tighten them too much you will increase the drag over the plastic guides and the pulley! If you loose them too much there will be a lag between opening and closing the window, like a 1sec delay just to stretch the cable and compress the cable spring.

To my experiences I found that a good adjustment is that one of the cable spring should be only half compressed when the other one is fully compressed (at full upper or lower position)

After tightening the cables you need to roll the cables to upper position again, place the rotary spring with a 1,5 turn of pre-tension and close the motor



and voila, job is completed now!:tongue:
The cable spring adjustment seems good to me this way

beautiful work :smile:, congratulations, already tested on the car? can you make an account of test (finished window):smile:

The difference is AMAZING!!!!!!!
I fitted the regulators back in the door and I must say I was not expecting such an improvement, windows are now closing extremely fast, like the way they should always do, I believe the pulley is responsible for about 80% of all the system drag!



Another important difference is that S2000 has cables in opposite direction, this will reduce the drag over the motor roller axle, as opposing strengths reduce themselves to zero!

I thought of using the S2000 motor, it actually fits in the doors without any modification, but cables are too short so I gave up the idea...but it would surely make an improvement

The moving part of the NSX regulator is equipped with...RUBBER guides!!! I don't know the reason of this strange idea, to my opinion some plastic guides would have been much better, like the one used in the window tracks!
So my advice is: lube these rubber guides as much as possible to eliminate the natural drag of rubber against aluminium.




To answer to Pigillam1 question: "why nothing to the top where the 2 90's are?"

-the top pulley would be subject to much higher strength (full weight of the glass+drag),while mine is only subjected to drag of the opening cable, so fixation of the pulley might be a problem
-I would need 2 pulleys there, that seemed quite complicated to me with no much room to fit them

My conclusions:
-the problem is coming from the regulator conception and not the window tracks or dried grease.
-drag is directly proportional to cable strength
-a pulley instead of the 180º plastic part will make a major improvement
-loose cables will reduce drag but add some lag between opening and closing movement

The easiest way to speed windows up without the pulley modification: simply open the motor and release some of the cable tension!

To remove the regulators from the doors, the manual refers to this:




I found an easiest way to remove them, without scribing any line while keeping the original adjustment of the windows!

1 - Upper the window completely (exact the opposite of the manual)
Tape the glass over the rear and front sashes, and all over the outside molding to fix it and prevent from falling down







Then from the inside just unscrew the 2 mounting bolts that fix the window to the regulator!



The window is now hold only by the tape, you can easily remove the regulator now.

Beautiful! Now we need to find a source for the pulley, since we all don't have access to an S2000 window assembly. Maybe Honda sells them - why do I doubt that??? Thanks Again and Happy Motoring!

Hugo... man.... you are crazy... very well done.... but i should have known that from all your Prelude swapping :tongue: :tongue:

i already subscribed this thread... i need to do that also, as my windows are boring slow...just need 2 s2000 regulators or fetch identical pulleys

keep up the good work.


Nuno

Hugabuga, tu t'appel pas Hugo ??

I used S2000 pulleys, but you can easily get them from any other car, a VW Golf uses 4 pulleys for example.
One S2000 regulator is enough to fix 2 NSX regulators Unhuz, then you can always resale the electric motor and cables to make it cheap.

If you wish to make it simple, just reduce the cable tension in a standard regulator by opening the motor. This will reduce the cable drag and you will notice a major improvement in speed.
Remember, reducing tension means the cable springs will be less compressed , so before pulling the window up or down, the motor needs to fully compress one of the springs! This is the reason why you will notice some lag in movement, personally I prefer this to slow windows.

The other solution I thought was to replace the cable springs by softer ones, thus tension could be reduced without any lag of movement.

Salut Cedric, oui c'est bien moi Hugo!:wink:

Prior to modify my regulators, I also adjusted the windows according to the manual, but I found an easier way to do it:

As in the manual you need to check 2 clearances (one from the outside of the car "H", and one from the inside "B") for each one of the 5 points, that is 10 clearances to check to adjust the window!



Clearance H is measured in the air, "by eye", as the glass is not aligned with the body!
Clearance B can only be measured from inside the car (section 1 to 4), so it seems quite impossible for one person to measure 10 clearances at the same time, in and out of the car, while moving the window forward or backwards or up and down!

Here's how I solve this problem.
I bought a "L" angle plastic profile of 30mm and 1meter long, that cost about 1$ and will save you a lot of time
Then simply cut it with scissors with the measures from the manual, 5 straight 30mm plates with H size marked, and 5 B 90º angle plates cut to claerance value very useful to measure it from OUTSIDE the car!



Then with the weatherstrips removed, I just taped my 5 "H" parts to the windows and aligned the window as in the manual and tight the bolts.
Then I placed the 5 B parts and aligned the tracks!







One major error from the manual is that the forward and backward adjustment of the window is done manly from the window to the regulator and not from the regulator to the door! So the 2 bolts fixing the window must be loose in order to move it freely, and not just the 4 of the regulator as the manual refers.

To my opinion it is the window that should determine the position of the rear track (the only one that has adjustment) and not the opposite. So 1st step is to align the window, then tight the 2 fixing bolts to the regulator, and then tight the 4 regulator bolts to the door.
Finally tight the rear track bolts in the position defined by the window already fixed and aligned!



My windows are now perfectly aligned and closing pretty fast
I hope you'll find this useful and of any help!:tongue:

Great post. You really do understand window regulator technology. I had to get our S2000 drivers door regulator replaced due to the fact the window fell an inch. I never did ask the dealership what failed. (it was under warranty)
When are you coming to Canada to work on my windows? Oh and bring the lovely lady in your avatar with you!!

Wow, what a great post. I guess I know what my next DIY is going to be.

Thanks Hugo!

Very nice! Thanks for sharing! So, are you going to be offering off the shelf regulators for those of us not brave enough? :biggrin:

Now that I have solved the problem, I think I have one last question to answer: why are the windows slowing down over the years?

I refuse to think is due to a drying track grease because that would be too simple and too convenient!

Before cutting the white plastic parts, I took a picture of them
The right one is the passenger side, and the left one is the driver side that means a much more used regulator (due to parking and paytolls of course for a LHD veicule).



We can clearly see that the driver side guide has a more U-shape form than the other one, it's seems that the cable have been "digging" the part so the contact surface of the cable is probably bigger, so it should produce a bigger drag resistance! Same probably goes for the other 2 plastic guides. But would that be enough to justify such a difference in speed over the years?

I am not convinced, I think the major problem must be coming from the motor itself, something must be happening there to justify such a power loss over time, and why do they have cables in opposite directions nowadays?

I think I have found the answer to this!! :wink:
I will do some tests and return with the solution tomorrow!

That is probably the best set of first posts on a forum in the history of the internet. Subscribed.

Why not just retrofit the entire S2000 regulator into the NSX? Seems to have the the same throw and angle.


The motors slow down after time: the bearings and brushes wear down and, I suppose, the grease needs replacing too.