Hi all.

 

I recently got my hands on a 2003 Fabia that's been passed down the family. Its front drivers side electric window doesn't go down as it should.

 

When the car was new from Skoda, I'm pretty confident it had manual windows all around, as the owners pack has a slip of paper detailling how the car was fitted with a electric window kit by the dealer prior to sale in 2003. This kit was a little panel of switches screwed into what would have otherwise been the recessed cubby/storage bay below the cassette deck. I've not seen any pictures online of any other Fabia that had this (picture below). I swapped out the cassette deck with a Sony double DIN head unit, so there's no space for the old window switches.

 

I've been debating whether or not to retrofit proper power windows around the car (or at least at the front), or restoring the front back to manual windows. I know the front window regulators have destroyed themselves at least three times since the car was new based on my brother's experiences and the service record prior to that.

 

Does anyone know if this would be possible? I guess the only way would be to open the door card and have a look. I'm just mindful that Skoda Parts only lists a window crank handle under "rear doors" and also claims it does not fit my car.

 

Thanks in advance!

David

I was going to try and convert my sons from electric to manual as his window controller failed plus the regulator totalled itself. If I remember correctly the door panel is different as well as the internal door plate. If yours had add on electric windows fitted then the manual fittings may still be behind the card. Is there any sign of where a manual winder would have been on the door card?

25 minutes ago, Alasdair1 said:

I was going to try and convert my sons from electric to manual as his window controller failed plus the regulator totalled itself. If I remember correctly the door panel is different as well as the internal door plate. If yours had add on electric windows fitted then the manual fittings may still be behind the card. Is there any sign of where a manual winder would have been on the door card?

I seem to remember that there's a small plastic cap over where the winder handle would be, probably just push fit into place.

 

I really did pick the wrong day to post this as I'm off to Scotland by train for just under a week so can't check!

If theres a small plastic cap then I assume its the original door card as my sons 06 plate doent have the plastic cap. You may be right that the motor was somehow retrofitted but  hopefully the original mechanism is still there minus the door winder it might be an easy convert. When you get back I would remove door card and have a look.

Its -2C in inverness today with sunshine if your heading north but no snow.

Alasdair

17 minutes ago, Alasdair1 said:

If theres a small plastic cap then I assume its the original door card as my sons 06 plate doent have the plastic cap. You may be right that the motor was somehow retrofitted but  hopefully the original mechanism is still there minus the door winder it might be an easy convert. When you get back I would remove door card and have a look.

Its -2C in inverness today with sunshine if your heading north but no snow.

Alasdair

I'll probably give that ago when it's decent weather!

 

Heading up to Inverness on the sleeper! Hope it makes it through as I'm trying to tick off all the Scottish branch lines while I'm up there.

Got a bit of snow today but not much. Hope the train gets through. The line was closed from perth to inverness due to flooding last week but not sure if its open again. We are on the Wick line from Inverness and I think its the same. Landslips and flooding etc. Havent heard any trains in the last few days. 

Alasdair.

Got through fine, and enjoyed the wonders of Inverness, Kyle of Lochalsh, Wick, Thurso, Fort William and Oban.

 

The car does, in fact, have small ciruclar caps in the door card where the old manual levers would have been. I've not yet tried popping one of them off (I'd rather do that in the daylight because I know I'll inevitably drop it, never to be seen again).

 

Gives me hope that the conversion is actually possible!

If its possible then when fitting winders I normally make sure the winder handle is vertical with the knob at the bottom. I had an old volvo that the windows kept opening slightly when driving probably due to gravity and vibration. I changed the angle of the winders and they stopped opening when driving.

Hope its a simple fix/conversion

Right... I'm looking more closely into this now as we're leaving winter and I'm more amenable to doing some work outside!

I'm working on the assumption that the drivers side regulator is absolutely screwed so I'll be needing a new one of those. All the parts I find online seem to be suited to electric windows so don't have the shaft to connect to a manual winder, which is rather frustrating.

For the passenger side, the regulator is fine (as far as I know), so I think I'd just need the part that connects from the regulator and provides a shaft for a manual winder but I can't find any of those anywhere. The Mk4 Polo part looks a bit different to the one I've seen attached to some LHD parts, and the sellers also want close to £60 for it from what I can see!

I tried to take one of the caps from the door cards out, from when the car had manual windows fitted from the factory, but they appear fastened in place somehow from behind the door card and I was just making scuff marks on the cap instead. Based on the rear ones, the cap wouldn't be flush like it is if the shaft between the regulator and where the winder used to be was still in there!

I'm starting to feel like I might have more luck going to a scrapyard and scouting out a Fabia there at this point!

Edited 7 April7 Apr by davwheat

So a rather happy update from me...

I managed to find a passenger side door panel from a breaker yard on eBay which came with a manual window crank and a winder handle, which I promptly ordered.

Based on the decent weather outside today, I decided to give it a go this afternoon. I managed to take the door card off relatively easily, discovering a few interesting surprises on the way, and started to take the inner door card out to do a straight swap with the one I ordered online... that was until I realised I could just rip off the motor and swap the crank mechanism onto it of course.

After that, taking out the glove box to rip out the cabling that was installed, and finally managing to get the door card back on and everything, I'm happy to say the swap works perfectly. I did swap the handle out for my own new-old stock version I had bought months prior to this as obviously looked much cleaner.

Some pictures to help anyone else in the future...

This is the replacement inner door assembly I bought off of eBay:

Here is what the door frame inside my car looked like before anything I'd done. You can see the blue+black cabling for the electric windows, which had been run through some existing gromits (with holes poked through them), directly through the door wiring harness thing and to the centre console.

I took off the electric motor and adapter gearing, then snipped the connector off the end so I could pull it all the way through from the centre console to remove it.

Here's the door assembly with the motor removed.

And here is the manual crank mechanism attached on to the car's inner door assembly. There was an adapter gear between the mechanism and the regulator itself. This was actually what had made me think I'd need to swap the whole regulator assembly (I thought they might be different between electric and manual), but thankfully I didn't need to in the end.

...and the old motor after removal below. It wasn't an OEM part, branded ELECTRIC-LIFE and labelled "Skoda compatible", but it was dated 19-04-2002. I think it's done quite well to last 23 years.

As for the surprises... I did need to take out the whole glove box in order to remove the cables. They had been quite liberally zip-tied to the existing car's wiring, so I had to snip those to remove it all. It also gave me a fantastic opportunity to re-route my Android Auto head unit's USB cable properly, as well as tidy up its microphone wiring. Overall, it was looking much cleaner after this!

You might have also noticed the zip tie on the locking peg thing on the door. This wasn't me! Someone in the past had, seemingly, broken or disconnected the linkage which connects that to the lock, and in order to not make it fall down inside the door, decided to zip tie it to hold it in place. It does, surprisingly, still work, but doesn't pop up properly when unlocked. You can shove the car key down the hole and push it down to lock it. Not a big deal, but something I should look at in the future (if I care enough). I have absolutely no idea when this happened, though.

Anyway, now I just have to do the drivers side in a few weeks I suppose! I ordered a Polo drivers side door assembly as the mechanism appears to be the same. I'm hoping it also has the translation gear as well, though, or I'm buggered...

I'll be honest: the most difficult part was actually putting the door card back on because of the whole zip-tie thing! I did also notice after all this that one of my low beam bulbs had gone out, and my tyres were all low on pressure, but those are all unrelated and were also very easy to sort. :P

Edited 24 May24 May by davwheat