You know how there are those things you keep around the house, "just in case you might need it?" Well, I had one of those. After removing the nut, I found the steering wheel hub to be stuck on the shaft. I remembered that I had a steering wheel puller at one point. I even remembered seeing it recently. I haven't needed to pull a steering wheel in over 20 years and yet, here I was needing a puller. It was hiding in a cabinet with some other hardware and after drilling a few new holes, I was able to pull the hub off and remove the switch assembly.
The switch pivot is definitely cracked, but it's actually more structurally sound than I thought it would be. Still, since I have the thing apart, I'm going to get it fixed correctly.
On to the next task for the day, which is the passenger side door. I put the latch back on and reassembled the door lock. The car was missing a window switch, and I had to order one. I hooked it up and hit the switch to find that the passenger power window was slower than the driver window. Onward with disassembly.
Here is the motor assembly which moves the window. The window is controlled by a long cable fished in a crazy way through the door. The ends of the cable are wrapped around a drum, which is powered through a worm gear drive and a motor. Most of these mechanisms are siezed up by 25+ year old grease which makes the drive really slow. Neither side for me was really bad. The grease was not completely solid, although it was pretty heavy. I cleaned up everything and added a healthy dose of lithium grease.
You can sort of see the way the cables run inside the door in this photo. After reassembly, the window moved, but was still very slow. Next I will put some relays in the motor circuit which show speed things up a bit.
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