In the E36 convertible (I have a 1996 328 convertible), since there are
no upper frames on the doors, the power windows are designed in such a
way that when you close the door, the window is supposed to go up by
itself another 1/2" or so in order to make a firm seal with the top.
Recently, the driver's side window on my car stopped doing this, and so
doesn't completely seal with the top, which, as you can imagine, is no
good when you're going down the highway, or when it's raining . I
can still raise and lower the window just fine, and the passenger side
window still behaves properly. I'm guessing this means that whatever
mechanism the window uses to determine whether the door is open or
closed is stuck on thinking it's open, but I have no idea what that
mechanism might be, or how to diagnose it. Any advice would be
appreciated. Thanks,

-Dan
afreet (AT) gmail (DOT) com

The window is supposed to drop by the same distance (you observed that this
distance is about 1/2 inch) when you open the door.

This activity os controlled by a switch inside the door latch mechanism. On
my car, my window went up all of the way, but did not drop properly when the
door was opened. In any case, I fixed my problem by removing the door latch
and cleaning the various linkages so they would travel properly and activate
the switches.

You didn't say, but, does the Auto Up feature work on the affected window.
Does the window go up higher if yoiu use the Manual Up feature? If so, then
you probably need to retrain your windows on what UP means. Do this by
holding the Auto Up button the entire time the window is moving upwards.




"afreet" <afreet (AT) gmail (DOT) com> wrote