Switches R'Us

[Al Powell]

Trevor - the hardest part of the window switch repair is getting the switch 
housings out of the plate which slides into the door handle.  This procedure 
uses screwdrivers with shaft diameters approx. that of toothpicks, preferably 
with flat blade tips - although two can be small Philips type.

In my 1990 200, each switch housing snaps into a plate which slides into the 
door handle.  Each housing has four tabs which lock into that plate; you can 
usually see two of them, and the other two are hidden by a structure on the 
plate.  I insert two screwdrivers down the back of the plate to pry the 
housing away from the plate, then push inward on the two exposed tabs with 
two more small screwdrivers. It takes about four hands, or two busy hands and 
a table to back you up. Don't stab yourself when the d*^n screwdrivers slip - 
I can tell you it really hurts.

Once the switch housing pops out:

1) Note the orientation of the rocker unit on top of the switch. It has a 
round tab in the middle on each side, and you want to re-install it with the 
same orientation it has now.  I picked the "down" side and made a scratch on 
he housing on that end, and also on the copper electrical contact on that 
end.  Then the rocker, the housing and the internal switch assy. are all 
marked.

2) Pry off the rocker switch, working from one side.

3) Look at the sides of the switch and you'll see that the internal workin's 
have four tangs sticking outward into the dark external housing. slide small 
screwdrivers down between the housing and switch internals at EACH contact 
point. If you do this right, the internals will pop out when the fourth 
screwdriver slides in.

4) Look at the housing - chances are that there are two hard fiber T-shaped 
devices like this still in there:
__|  |__
|______|

Treat these gently.  I used tweezers to remove them, and installed them into 
the slots in the internals before re-installing the internals into the 
housing.

5) Clean contacts (obvious) and put T-shaped units back into the internals. 
 Snap internals back into housing, re-install rocker unit, making sure at 
EACH step that you still have the correct orientation of each piece. Snap the 
housing back into the door handle plate and re-install.

************************************
Al Powell
Fort Collins, CO
powellae at home.com
cougfan1 at gocougs.wsu.edu
************************************

On Monday, July 16, 2001 12:28 PM, Trevor Irwin [SMTP:trirwin at indiana.edu] 
wrote:
>
> Al, that's great. How did you get those switches out of their housing etc?
> I have a switch that needs some fixing, but I cant get the dang thing
> apart (i figure i could if i broke it, but that wouldn't help me).
>
> Trevor
> -------------------------------
> T. L. Irwin
> T104 Coordinator
> Swain East 335
> 855-3573
> php.indiana.edu/~trirwin