[SAGA]I had a '95 Bronco with an ornery back window that eventually decided to stop working but it had the decency to do it in the UP position so I could safely ignore it. Now I just bought a '96 and the day I went over to pick it up the PO was getting his stuff out of the back and the window wouldn't go up. The good news is it gave me an excuse to haggle an extra $150 out of the price. The bad news is winter's coming and I don't really feel like fighting with this stupid thing now that the glass is in the way of fixing what's wrong.[/SAGA]

Okay, here's my question: has anyone just fabbed up a replacement window? I went over to Menards and a sheet of plexiglass in the size I would need would cost about $35. My plan was to cut it and fit it with weatherstrip along the bottom so that you slide it up into the shell and the close the tailgate to keep it in place. I figured I could attach a short piece of seatbelt web from the gate handle to poke outside which would still let me open it from the outside. The obvious downside is no real security. The upside is an always working back window.

Any ideas, comments or insults? Any other options I could look at? What would be really nice is to have a flip-up window that would lock to the shell at the sides just like God intended. However I can't think of a good way to add hinges to the shell without making it look completely GHETTO.

 

You could just fix it lol. If you take the cover off the gater you can get the window up so you can work on it. Just lay on your back and lift it up. Takes a bit of effort but I did it to mine when it quit on me 2 years ago. mine was the gear pack so I had to get it in the up postion to replace it.

 

I got the cover off with only a little drama, but I couldn't figure out how to get the window up from there. Should I cut it off the track and pull it out?

 

I'm gonna go with insult and say that this is a REALLY dumb idea. You will never get a reliably working rear window if you cobble it together with plexiglass and a seatbelt.

The window comes out. Do a search on it, it's been discussed lots of times. Once you remove the tailgate cover on the inside, there are four bolts that hold the window to the regulator arms. Then you just slide the window up and out of the way, supporting it with something, and fix whatever's broken underneath. Most of the time it ends up being the plastic gears inside the window motor. You'll need to remove the regulator and fix the motor with the kit from Ford. They all stock this part because all power window motors for years used the same motor and gear kit.

 

Man I wish I had known about the bolts lol. I was able to get mine up by pushing on it, but it was diffacult. It may have went up due to the fact that the gears were totally stipped from use even after I new it was bad.

 

If you go on Fullsize bronco.com there is a guy with 46 pages on the Bronco back window.Sorry different site but this helped me alot with my window.Not good with computers or I would send the site to you.

 

UPDATE - I got the plexiglass cut and installed back in December and it worked well enough. It got me through the winter and that's all I was hoping for. It didn't look ghetto at all either. You couldn't even tell something was different until you got right up to the truck where you could see it didn't go down into the gate. The hassle with it was that someone had to release the gate from the inside while I lifted the plastic to clear the window opening. I didn't have any trouble getting it sized and shaped to seal at both the topper and the tailgate.

Since it warmed up I was able to get the tailgate open and found three problems: bad safety switch (replaced with a jumper wire), dodgy connector to the motor wiring (fixed) and a weak motor (replacement in hand but still waiting on time). It goes up and down now but sometimes needs some manual assistance in the middle where the regulator arms have the least leverage. I also replaced the weather stripping with new parts from JBG.