Car Repair - Newlywed Style

The lesson learned this month had less to do with techy can-do's and more to do with using good new-fashioned googling to save some bucks. A few weeks ago, I went to roll down my car window and heard a not-so-delightful clacking sound. After talking over the options with my hubby, we decided that I should not roll down my window, given the possibility that it could fall into the door panel and break. Good plan, until I went to the drive-up window at the pharmacy, forgot all about the window, rolled it down, and it was rendered stuck. Open. Ugh.

I took it to the dealer to figure out the problem, to be told it would cost $600. Ugh again.

With my best can-do attitude, I did some googling to see if there were any other options. Happily, I found an incredibly thorough tutorial online for replacing window regulator clips (the fancy name for "my window won't go up the way it's supposed to"), found the parts on Amazon for under $100 and the husband and I decided we would do it ourselves!

Then we kind of got used to the window being down, and got busy with life, and forgot to replace it. Until I came out to my car one morning and it had been broken into. Technically, the window was down, so there wasn't much "breaking" required to get into the car, but the lousy guy who broke in had a nice time throwing my maps around and breaking off the handle to my locked glove box, in hopes of getting to my Steve Miller Band tapes, I guess.

Reminded by our friendly neighborhood thief that it was in fact time to get down to business changing the door parts, we set up in the garage last Saturday and got to work. The tutorial turned out to be fantastic - over 30 pages, with full color photos, showing how to remove every last piece, change the regulator clips, and put it back together.



We ran into a small snag when we discovered that my lovely VW car-builders had chosen to bolt in the speaker in a way that we had to make an emergency trip to the hardware store so my darling husband could have the pleasure of removing the bolts with a combination of a metal cutting drill bit thing, a metal wedge, and a big hammer.

All told, the project took about 5 hours and cost just $115. And turned out to be a great test of newlywed communication and teamwork skills. Luckily, we passed those tests with flying colors.