[Ameiseuk]

Originally Posted by moltuae

I've not had a D2 window mechanism fail on me (yet) but it would appear they operate in pretty much the same way as my old Citroen XM windows used to do (essentially a steel wire rope and pulleys) and on the XM they would fail alarmingly frequently. Audi window mechanisms are clearly better designed/built, since they last longer, but ultimately they will no doubt be prone to the same type of failure ... a rusty rope. My guess, I'm afraid to say, would be that it's not an 'obstruction' but a frayed rope. My XM windows often behaved the same way, shortly before the rope snapped or jammed.

Had exactly that in my Infiniti - window wound down happily but getting it back up would be accompanied by all manner of crunching

One strand of the wire rope had snapped and was getting mangled at the first pinch point in the system - in my case one of the lower pulleys.

Given the lack of Infiniti parts in the UK (just about everything is 4 weeks from Japan) I had to strip the mechanism out of the car and remove the mangled wire.
Stripped it back to where I could tape up the frayed wire without running through any gearbox/pulleys and reassembled -worked for months before I got round to swapping over with a new regulator unit.