NSR window stuffed - A8L D2

[johnny_quattro]

I noticed at the local car wash that my near side rear window on my A8L wasn't completely closed, as pointed out by my friendly eastern Europeans before they washed it the other day. It had been acting strangely prior to this by going down when I pressed the 'up' button?

It made a half attempt at going up and then made a horrid noise and that was it. No more movement so I had to get out of the car and push the window with both my hands in an upward direction. A tad embarrassing.

I took advantage of the glorious weather today and had a bash at seeing exactly what's wrong. The thin lengthy door trim was prised out, along with all the other bits and bobs including the door handle, electric window switch and my special limo switch which moves the front seat forwards or backwards from the rear seat. You can see the additional wiring for this switch at the bottom of the door pocket.

I could hear the motor clicking and then shutting off due to resistance so I knew that the problem was located elsewhere. I then removed a rather thick padded lining so that I could see the motor and window mechanism. At the bottom of the electric motor was a length of bicycle brake cable for want of a better description (Bowden cable) but it went nowhere - just pointing to the sky! I had a quick nose inside the door frame to see if anything had fallen and whilst my hand was there, it was brushed by the frayed end of a wire cable.

The end of said cable looked rusty to be honest, and had obviously snapped. You can see my trusty father's hand showing this in one of the photos. This probably accounted for the strange opposite behaviour when pressing down on the window switch and the window tried to go up? I think that the other end of the cable has probably got wrapped around something...

I've left a voicemail with the forum's sponsors so hope to progress this further on Monday. Forum searches revealed that cables do sometime go, but it's rare on a D2 apparently. Not sure if my mechanisms are different due to the extra length/weight of my window compared to a standard A8 FL as I've checked on ELSAWIN and it does look different.

Final photo taken shows that my car has SOUL - see top of reverse side of door card lol.
(see attached pics of the door and innards)

To be continued!