How to Replace Master Window Switches 2013-18 Subaru Forester

Hey friends, it's Lynn here at 1A Auto. Today I'm working on a 2014 Subaru Forester. I'm going to be showing you how to take out the window switch unit. It's going to be very simple. I want to be the guy that shows you how to do it. If you need any parts or instructional videos, you can always check us out 1aauto.com. Thanks.

All right, so here we go. We've got our door open. We're looking at our door panel. We're gonna use a small pocket screwdriver or whatever you happen to have, something small. Right here there's a little flappy door. I'm just gonna grab this, pop it open behind there. There's a Phillips head screw located right there. Okay. So we're going to remove that. Take a Phillips head screwdriver, turning it counter clockwise of course. Grab our little screw out of there. That's what it looks like. We're going to use something like these. These are called trim tools. They're plastic, so you won't mare up any of your plastic door panel here. Feel along the bottom. Just make sure you don't feel any screws or anything like that that go in, hold it to the door itself. It feels pretty good. I'm just gonna start along the bottom, going to use my door panel tools here. See if I can find where the little clips are. If feels like there's one right about, there we go. It feels like it's getting tighter up here. Okay.

This side, same thing. Feels pretty good. Okay. Just try shaking it around a little bit. It feels like it gets tight up here. All right. So, while we're moving it around, I feel like it's getting ready to come loose. Start wiggling it. It feels as though there's something holding it in right here so I'm just going to grab something. I'm going to try to pop this off real quick. Okay. I've got my pocket screwdriver again. Right here there's a little slot. I'll show you it. One second here. I'm trying to get that off. Right here is where I went. Okay. Right in between there and here. Just pulls out these little tabs. Okay. Now, we're going to find two more Phillips heads. One right there, one located down here. You can pick which one you want to remove first you do you booboo. One, looks just like the first one. Grab this one. Number three. Just like the other two. Cool beans.

We're going to grab our door panel, wiggle it around. It comes right up now. Behind here there's going to be some wiring and some cables, so you just want to make sure you take a look and see what's going on before you go ahead and hang it, right. We're going to disconnect all we can. We're going to take this white one right here. You want to try to remember the white goes up top. You can mark it if you need to or whatever you need to do to remember or just watch the video to see how it was removed and just re-install it that way. Anyway, white one. Pull it. You can can take a peak. It's just a little ball. Okay. Easy peasy. You're going to go with the grain. I'm just going to pull it out. Lift it. Let's keep on rolling.

Down here there should be a little push clip right in the center. There's the push right there. Okay. That's where I pushed on. There's one right here. Let me try to push on that one. Here we are. We are gonna feel around the big one here. That one's probably on the other side. Let's see if I can find it. I'm going to try to use a little pick. I'm going to push in on the center right here. I'll show you where I'm pushing. Subaru was nice and they put it in the back where you can barely get to but we we're going to just push right there and that unlocks this little clip right here. Okay. So we've got the door panel off. We've got it on a safe, secure area where it's not going to get scratched or scuffed. Super important, right? We've got a couple of Phillips head screws. There's one right here. There's one right here. Okay. There's also a couple of little clips. So you're gonna need a small pocket screwdriver.

One of those clips is located right here and the other one's located well, it's kind of buried right behind here. So, this one's going to be the interesting one to get to. We're going to deal with that in a minute. First we're going to take out these Phillips head screws and we'll move along. There's one. There's two. As you can tell they're both the same. Set those aside. Time for our handy pocket screwdriver. Okay. We're going to try it for the hard one first. See if I can poke my head in here. I'll show you how these work in one second. Once I get it to break free. Come on baby. Almost. Okay. Slide it outta here hopefully. It feels like this one might've clipped back in. That's okay. I love the struggle.

Okay, so here we go. When I was digging, I was coming along the plastic right up along here. There's a little push. Okay. I was pushing on that. Basically I slid it in and I pried a little bit. It pushed this in that let it drop down, and I did the same to this, let this side drop down. So, there we are. Now as you can tell we've removed our window switch. We've got our mirror switch here and our locking mechanism. So, now that we've got this whole panel out we're going to try to get just to the windows here. We've got the window area, our locks and everything.

This is all one unit. It's very simple to get this out. We've got our clips. There's one here, one there, one here, one there. Okay, all I'm going to do is I'm going to take my pocket screwdriver and try to wedge it in here. Here we are. Do this one right here. Wedge it in. Okay, we're cruising. Do this one. That one's coming. We'll get this guy right here. At this point it's ready to come apart. So, there we are. Here's our window switch. Easy peasy. And now you're clear to replace it.

So, here we go. It's time to go ahead and install our window switch. We're going to put it back on our plate. It's going to be very simple. We've got a couple of little locking things here. Tabs, right? They go inside these grooves. So, all I'm gonna do is I'm gonna set it in so everything matches up. I'm just going to give it a little squeeze, a little squeeze, and there we are. It's time to re-install this into the door panel right here. Okay. I'm just gonna come from the backside. Let me slide it through. There's going to be a screw hole here, screw hole there. It's going to line up with these. Okay.

We'll get our little clippy do's they're going to go snap, snap. And come in from the backside. See if I can get it situated. It might be easier to look from the backside while I do it but we'll just wing it. It feels good, nice and latched in. Before I screw it in let's just take a peak. It looks decent. It's all lined up right along here. If it isn't just give it a little bunk like that. Clips it in. That feels good.

Let's go ahead and mount it in now. We've got our two Phillips head screws. We're going to start them both in. We're not going to tighten either of them until they're both started. Still loose. Do this one. This one I'm going to go ahead and tighten right up. I'm just screwing into plastic so it doesn't need to be very tight. There we are. Make sure our bit doesn't stay in the screw. Now we're clear to put our door panel back on.

So, here we go. We've got some electrical connectors here. We're going to go ahead and connect all of these in and then we're gonna move along. We're going to connect in that one down there and of course we're going to put in our little cables. Very important. You don't want to leave these off cause well yeah, good luck getting in. Here we go. We got one big one that's going to go right down here in the bottom. Click a couple of other ones here. Click, this one right here goes up higher. Click. Easy peasy. Cool. We'll do that electrical connector in one second down there. Just hang it so it's ready to go. I'm going to do these while I'm up here and then I'm just going to set the door panel inside its little thing so I can get down under there. Okay.

So, we've got two cables. We've got our green cable. This one goes down to the handle. So, I'm going to go ahead and slide it in. Then I'm gonna lock it into this little do hickey. Boom. Okay. Right here, the top one. This is the lock cable. Just goes in. See if I can get it. You want to make sure the door is in the locked position here makes it easier to get the cable in. Here we are. I'm going to lock it in. Here we are. Perfect.

I'm just going to take the door panel. I'm just going to set it up on here. Now, I can let go for a second. We've got our cable right here. Wiring harness. Just going to go into the little light. Let me see if I can find it real quick. Yup. Okay, so right here. This is going to go right in. Okay. Let me see if I can find it again. I'll show you right where I am. The lock goes facing up clicks in, easy peasy. Everything's in there. Cool. All right. Before I go ahead and clip this in, I'm just going to test it real quick. So, we're going to go ahead and unlock it. Now we're going to go ahead and lock it. That works perfect. Cool.

So now we'll say that it's ... Let's see I'm going to go in and actually cause that's the door handle I'm going to be testing. So, I'll go in and I'm going to try to open the door. Cool. Now I'm going to try it again, but I'm going to lock it. Unlock. Perfect. All right. Let's get this door panel mounted in. Make sure it goes down. No binding. Goes back up. Love it. Door locks, great. Here we are. Works. Works. So here we go. We're gonna test the mirror. Left side mirror. Looks good. All right. Now we can go ahead and put the door panel on. So, we'll make sure that the door panels pulled down fully. We tested everything. We're good to go. Now we made sure we plugged in this light down here. Definitely on, nice and bright. Somebody put in an LED. That's cool.

There's little holes inside the door panel or the door itself. That's where the pins from the door panel are going to sit into. So you just take a peek, make sure you got them looking like they're pretty lined up. Start at the top. Work your way around. Just give it a little bonk, bonk, bonk. That's my thing. Here we are. It feels like maybe one more here. So we've got three screws. One here, there, and there.

So theoretically we should have three screws left and we do. So, we're going to go ahead and put these in. We're just going to start them in until we get all three started. Okay. One screw, two, three. Okay. Going to use our screwdriver. We're going to turn them into the right. Like I said, I'm not going to tighten it down yet until I get all three of them started in. It's very important in case you need to shift the door panel around it all. Line up the holes. Just going to help save you a little bit of time in the long run. Here we are. This was the last one, so I'm just going to snug it right up. That feels good. This one feels good. Last one feels good.

Close our little door here. Nice. We're gonna put this on. It's this right here. Let's get this right here. Okay. This goes down in there. Once it's in you just line everything up. Give it a little squeeze. All right. Now if you wanted to you can go ahead and clean it down. Get off any fingerprints you might've put on there or leave them, whatever you did.

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