How to Replace Rear Window Regulator 2004-13 Toyota Prius

Hi, I’m Mike from 1A Auto. We’ve been selling auto parts for over 30 years!

To take our window switch out. We have to pop this silvery-chrome piece off first. So I'll take our plastic trim tool. You can get these from 1AAuto.com. Kind of work it underneath here carefully. Then we're going to pop it straight up. It'll unclip. Put that aside. Now the switch bezel can come up, so again, I'll use the prying tool and start to pry it up. Try over here. Get it to pop up.

So I'm prying it straight up and out. You're going to unplug it, pushing in the lock, pulling the connector out. You could probably remove this door panel with the window switch in place. This just makes it easier because you already have it unplugged. You don't have to wrestle with the door panel while you're taking it off to unplug it. So now we have that unplugged and removed. Take your plastic prying tool, and just lift up. There's a little rubber pad here. You need to get that out of the way. There's a screw behind there. Use a Phillips head screwdriver. Take this screw out. Put that aside.

Then go behind the door handle. There's a little piece of trim here. Take the plastic prying tool and pop this out. Just unclips. There's another Phillips head screw behind there. Remove that. Those two screws removed. The door panel is now just clipped in place. We're going to use our plastic prying tool to just get under the edge here. That one's too thick. Start with a thinner one. Get a thicker one in here so I can pry it. Kind of find near where our clip is. I think there's a clip there. Usually takes quite a bit of force, so once you start to pry it, you'll pop the clips out. Usually you can get a hand under here. Give it a good, strong tug. It clips around the top of the sheet metal, so lift it up and then off.

Now the Bowden cables. You can actually pop the whole door handle out of the trim. Just kind of grab onto it. Just pop it out of the clips, and we'll slide it out of place. Let that hang. Then you put your door panel aside. If the clips stayed in the door panel, pop those out, and they can be reused. Just like that. You can put them right back into your door panel, and they can be reused.

To remove the door handle from the Bowden cables, the top one's the door lock. The bottom one's the door handle. Push the cable out of the holder, and then slide the cable and the little ball at the end out of there. Do the same for the other one.

To remove the water barrier, we need to take this metal bracket off. There's a 10 mm bolt here and a 10 mm bolt here. It also has a Phillips head cutout in it, but I'm going to use the 10 mm socket ratchet and extension because it's easier. Take it out. It's just a self-tapping bolt that goes into a plastic grommet. Put that aside.

To remove the vapor barrier, it is stuck on with this black adhesive. It's called Butyl tape. It's basically forever sticky, and you can remove it pretty easily, especially when it's pretty warm out. You'll just gently peel back on it. I like to a take a fresh razor blade, and you can cut along the edge of it, and this stuff will re-stick back to itself, so as long as you're careful taking this off, you can reuse it 'cause it'll go right back in place and re-stick. Before I try to take this all off, I'm going to pull these wires out of the way. Disconnect this wire for the door lock actuator. So I'm pushing in the lock. Pull it out. So, that'll eventually go through the opening in the plastic. These cables will go through the opening.

This plug for the window motor, I need to unplug that. It's a little bit deep to get my finger in there, so I'm going to use the plastic prying too. Pry up on it. Pull the connector out. It's clipped in here, so I'm going to have to unclip that. Before I get that far, I'm going to unplug the speaker. Again, I'll push the lock in and pull it out. And this harness is clipped up here. Take your metal clip prying tool. Get behind the clip and pry it out. They might break a little bit, but they should pop right back in there afterwards. So, that's loose. It'll come through the opening in the plastic. Now, just work your way around gently peeling this off. We'll just cut the black Butyl tape with a fresh razor blade. Probably want to wear gloves. It will get all over your hands. Just working my way around the door.

Don't worry too much if it looks like you're mangling the plastic. Plastic's pretty stretchy. The Butyl tape is very sticky. You should be able to reuse this without a problem. Even if it doesn't look that pretty afterwards, you're going to put your door panel back over it. You don't see it every day. Not a big deal. The real tricky part is to carefully pull it off of here and not get it to stick to itself too much. Guide these wires out. I should say cables. Guide the wire harness out. All right. I'm going to try not to get it to stick to itself, and then put it in a safe place where it's not going to land on the ground or anything because it will, of course, land on the sticky side down, but it's in pretty good shape. We can reuse this.

With the ignition turned on we're going to lower the window so we can see the mounting bolts. There's one mounting bolt here and then through this access hole here we can see that red tab with a bolt in it. With the window regulator in position where I can get to the bolts to remove the glass I can unplug the switch just so it's out of the way. I don't damage it. Put it down. I'm going to unplug the window motor. The ignition is also off. This way it won't move on you and pinch your fingers. I'm just using the prying tool to push in on the lock and pull it out. Put that aside there.

Use a 10 millimeter socket extension and ratchet to remove the mounting bolts. The same for this one. We're going to lift up the glass carefully. I don't want it to fall. Slide it up the run channel. Pop it off the regulator. Get it in place and then take some tape and tape it so it doesn't fall. Another option is to take an old t-shirt or rag and you can also stuff it in here and that will hold the window in place. Get it out of the way so I can work.

Remove the six mounting bolts for the window regulator. And this one here you actually only remove it, you'll loosen it, you won't totally remove it. Just let the regulator hang on it. Fully remove these bolts. Now it's just hanging on that one there. This way you don't remove all the bolts and have the regulator fall in the door. Reach in. Unhook it. Go through the opening. Carefully so you don't squeeze this together and pinch your fingers. The motor's going to pop out of here and carefully close this up. Try not to catch my fingers in here. And guide it out of the opening.

Here's our motor and regulator. To remove the motor we'll just mark the position of the window regulator. This way when we put it back together the window glass will slide back into position. Use a T25 torx bit to remove the bolt—these screws here. Get them all loosened up. Separate the motor from the regulator.
And it can be replaced.

This motor was working fine. We're going to reuse it. I'm going to line up my marks that I made. Put the motor back into position. Get the screws started. When I feel it get tight I'll just stop. Tighten up the other two the same way.

We're reusing this window regulator because it's working just fine but if you're installing a new one you want to make sure take this bolt out of here that was your temporary bolt and then reinstall it. Don't thread it all the way in. Just leave it a couple threads caught because as we slide it into the door. Be careful of the sheet metal, it's pretty sharp. Cut your hands up. There's the little rubber grommet for the motor that's coming through. The bolt's coming through here. And we can hang the window regulator. This is the upper mounting bracket. It can go either way.

It has a couple tabs that will fit into there. Slide it behind and up. Just like that. Just be mindful when you're installing the window regulator and you've unbolted the glass. The two bolts that bolt into the glass have a washer attached to them and the window regulator bolts do not so these two different bolts. Save these for your window glass. Get the bolts started. I'm going to tighten these up. I can't quite get…The regulator's a little too far away to get the threads caught on that hole so I just tighten these up. Now I can get this bolt in here. Just snug these all up. You don't have to kill them.

Just bring them down tight and then stop. Doesn't really matter what order you tighten them in. Just make sure you tighten them all so your regulator doesn't rattle. There's one here, here, here, here, here and here. I'm going to take our tape out. I do have the old t-shirt stuffed in here. If you just use the tape, when you remove the tape make sure you hold the glass so it doesn't slide down. Make sure you hold onto the glass so it doesn't fall.

Take the rag out. Carefully guide it down. These plastic pieces have to go over the middle collars that are there. You might have to flex the glass a little bit or the regulator in as you push it down. Got that one. And the other side's a little harder to see. There it is. Here you will use the bolts that have the little washers on them. Thread it in. Once you feel it get tight just stop. Do the same for both.

Reuse our vapor barrier. Feed the harness through the opening in it over here. Spin it around. There is another opening in it here for this. And then our bowden cables go through this opening here. And feed all the harnesses through and get this thing pretty close. Like I said, this stuff is forever sticky so you can kind of just mush it right back into place. It won't look 100% perfect as it was when it was there originally but it should stick just fine. That was open before. If it's a little wrinkly no big deal, just mash it in there. Go all the way around the door. Push it right back into place.

Plug all your harness connections back in. That's for the door lock actuator. Window motor. Clip this back in place. This one clipped up here. There's no connection to it. Plug your speaker back in. The remaining one was for the door window switch.

We'll reinstall the bracket with the self-tapping screws, self-tapping screw bolts that go into the grommets. Use a 10 mm socket to reinstall them. They're just going into plastic grommets, and they're self-tapping, so when you feel them get tight, just stop.

All right, so the white one goes on top. This is for the door lock. So put the little ball through here. Slide this over. Clip it in place. And for the door handle, do the same. Pop that in there. Slide it over. Snap it in place. Slide the interior door handle into the door panel. Let it click into place. Now the lip of this door panel hangs over the sheet metal lip. So, get it started. It doesn't matter if the window's up or down. Go into place, and it'll hang down like that.

Make sure that your connector for the window switch is not going to get pinned back there so you can get to it, and now we're going to push this back into the door panel. Pushing the trim panel back into the sheet metal door panel, and all the clips will snap back into place, and that's locked in place. We'll reinstall a self-tapping screw here. If you feel it get tight, you just stop.

Reinstall the trim piece. So it's got some clips. Open up the door handle. It's going to slide in place and just click in and lock. Reinstall the self-tapping screw in the bottom of this door pull. Get them lined up in the hole, then screw it in. There's a rubber pad that goes over it. Reinstall the window switch, plug it back in. It will click when it locks, and then we're going to just push it straight down into the openings. It'll snap into place. Reinstall the silver door trim. All the tabs will basically go straight down. Snap into place. That's reinstalled.

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