Shawn110975 do you have any more difficult questions to ask me :biggrin:?
Well, I freely shared the idea with the community so anyone is free to copy and replicate it, as only good ideas get stolen I will take that as a proof of merit rather than a “copyright” robbery
However, the funniest and most interesting part of this project is that we all shared our ideas first, everyone brought his own concern and contributed to find the best solution, I don't see OLDMSNX talking to anyone, he just came with a ready-made solution, promising to sell kits!
He probably just thought that a military aircraft pulleys would be better just because of their best-money-can-buy quality, and that would be enough to improve my solution.
Truth is that you simply do not need aircraft or NASA spacecraft hi-tech quality there, no car manufacturer uses them, that is simply useless.
I see a lot of problems with upper pulleys, that is why I gave up of them, here is my mechanical engineering concerns about it and OLDMSNX's solution:
First, the lower pulley is only acting on the returning cable, load is really low there about 1kg (2.2lbs) force, the weight of the glass does not exist here, nevertheless I chose heavy-duty pulleys from running home doors/windows and so I never had overload issues there.
Then I used 8mm (5/16”) diameter screw, with double 20mm (13/16”) washers of 1.5mm (3/64”) thickness, all made from highly rigid stainless steel material and therefore I never had fixation or bending problems.
The upper pulley directly holds the glass weight in a 90o angle cable means a resultant force equals to square root of 2(=1.41) times the load, and each time the window gets closed it must permanently hold the maximum motor tension capacity of about 20kg-44lbs (remember my “bottle” movie, the motor could lift 4 bottles of 5kg ...)
that means a permanent 1.41x 20kg = 28kg (62lbs) (load directly on the upper pulley! I don't see any load capacity chart in his pulley website...
But the biggest problem (admitting the pulley can hold the load capacity) is the fixation of the pulley in the upper part of the regulator, how can you prevent the thin aluminium base of the regulator or the pulley screw from bending with a 62lbs force? Then if it bends, the pulley will touch the base, produce friction, will become a grinding wheel to cable or its own groove if the cable miraculously doesn't jump out! Better would be a 2 points fixation rather than 1 there
Another issue would be vibration transmission from the motor trough the cable and trough the pulleys (or produced by the ball bearings themselves as they are metal against metal and he uses 3 of them) to the door witch will act as a resonance box, we would probably hear an unpleasant noise each time you open or close your windows, that is why all car manufacturer use plastic pulleys without any ball bearings, I use a quite “metal against plastic” one, and plastic does dissipate all cable vibrations if any.
As Greenberet correctly mentioned, there might also be another problem, he is using phenolic pulley, we don't know how they will react with ageing to all types of grease. Completely dry cables would produce a lot of friction in the cable outer casings, and will surely get damaged over time.
That maximum 20kg- 44lbs load is also acting on that grey cable outer casing, he invented some sort of crushing-plate solution to hold that cable casing
I am not sure this is the best solution.
It also seems to me that he needs to use more cable length to pass through all the pulleys, resulting in a short travel distance of the lever?
Then there is not a single safety guiding device on top of the 3 pulleys, this is “suicidal”, would you hang a 900$ painting (price of an nsx regulator) weighting 62lbs (maximum load of motor), on a wall, just by a small 1mm (1/32”) cable, in a permanent hearthquake environment (bumps on the street, closing door wile operating the window) hoping it will never fall from the nail, relying only on the cable tension itself?
And finally, just for fun, if you operate his regulator outside the door and fully close it I bet you will break the upper pulley or its fixation as there is no stopper to prevent the lever from touching the pulley, the OEM white upper guide does act as a stopper.
Using a faster motor, like an Acura CL or something else is not a good idea, faster means stronger, so instead of 20kg maximum force, you will have 30 or 40kg, that will bend or probably break the lever due to CREEP (mechanical deformation over long periods of permanent load), OEM creep is already too high, check how your lever gets deformed with time. It happens because upper stoppers are acting on glass and not directly on the lever, so there is a torque acting on it thus producing its creep deformation.
There is no torque when fully opening the window as lower stop bump acts directly on lever.
Then for cheap guides, if someone has a better solution then producing a mould to get plastic injection please let me know and I will save a lot of $$ next time, I used the same company that produces dashboard parts for German VW/Audi here in Portugal, we have a very well reputationed mould industry, next time I will shoot a movie of the TEFLON guides being produced and getting out of that monster machine just for fun and sharing
Looking at all these disadvantages, I clearly believe there is no point using upper pulleys, and best way to prove would be to time the motor with a 5kg (11lbs) load (=weight of the glass), without any pulleys and friction at all (direct cable on weight), to see how fast it could ever get and compare it with the 2.5 sec down and 3.5 up times that I have reached with my solution. I will try to find some time this weekend to make that test.
A better idea than a 3 pulley mod....would be a 4 pulley mod where you don't need to destroy the OEM regulator, you can sell it and with that money get and adapt a more modern regulator, for ex from an Audi, directly on the 2 window tracks, with a pulley on each side of the tracks and you wont't have torque issues on regulator lever to worry about:biggrin:
So my advice is: keep it simple, use my kit or build your own single-lower-pulley and you will avoid dangerous higher loads on pulleys, reduced regulator lifetime with increased risk of cable jump and regulator failure, bending issues, PLUG & PLAY loss, grease on phenolic unknown results, operating noise vibrations, increased lever creep and so on...
I have sold a lot of kits, and not a single regulator have failed so far, mainly because I kept the OEM Japanese reliability of that upper guide intact! I will focus on other mods now as I truly believe this one has reached its ultimate stage with the sleeve, single lower pulley and the teflon guides
OLDMNSX: please respect my work and post your answer, if any, on your own thread, as someone kindly asked me to delete mine on yours in respect of you!
Thank you all for your support
Hugo