Bronco tailgate window

[exbass94]

My girlfriend's mother has a 1994 Bronco. I tried to replace a burnt out brake light yesterday, but you need to open the tailgate in order to do that. And in order to open the tailgate, you must first roll down the rear window. The rear window will not roll down. My girlfriend's mother said, "oh yeah, that's been broken for years..." Well, I'd like to fix this for her. Burnt bulbs annoy me, are a safety issue, and are susceptible to "fix-it" tickets. Plus I kind of decided to make this truck my project vehicle and I like working on it. It has over 208k miles and there are plenty of things wrong with it to keep me busy. Anyway...

The window tries to roll down so I know it's getting power, but barely goes down 2 inches before getting stuck. I suppose it's either a weak motor or bad regulator. How do I tell if the regulator is bad and what else can I do to diagnose this? I've never really dealt with fixing power windows before.

 

[chilsam]

pull the panel off the tailgate

and watch while window is activated to lower. While down squirt some soap into the runners on both sides to help the window move raise it then lower it again while GENTLY pushing down on the window.

 

[adsm08]

If you can hear the motor moving it's a regulator.

A bad motor wont' usually cause a window to not go down. It would be more likely to cause it to not come up.