I've read a bunch of posts about slow-raising tailgate windows but haven't seen anyone talk about the spring tension. When I pulled out my lift mechanism, I noticed that the springs seemed pretty weak. I tested with the weight of the window and find that they were offering very little help to the window. I'm assuming that their purpose is to counter the weight of the window so the motor has less work to do.
Sooooo... I moved the arms about 90 degrees past the full-up position (they crossed each other at this point). I unhooked the springs and backed them off a half turn on the shaft. Grabbed the other end with vice-grip pliers and torqued them back on. I doubted the wisdom of this approach at this point, as the tension is high enough that it was hard for me move the arms out. Without the mechanism attached to anything, I was afraid to try to get them all the way to the down position. I was unable to test with the window weight, so I just kept going. I attached the motor and used it to move the arms back to the up position. The motor struggled a bit going farther than that and it seemed like the plate was bending a bit under the torque. But I crossed my fingers and kept going, figuring (hoping) that the window weight would counter-act the additional spring torque.
I got it all back together and now the window goes up with a vengeance! Goes down a little slow, but still much faster than it went up before I made this change. Light pressure with a hand and it goes down quick...which is much easier than trying to pull it up
Here is a video of the window going up and down.
Chris
p.s. anyone know how to make the embed work on this forum?...this isn't working for me: [youtube]https://youtu.be/EoOCzij2qWA[/youtube]