How to Replace Window Regulator 1998-2010 Volkswagen Beetle

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Hi, I'm Mike Green. I'm one of the owners of 1A Auto. I want to help you save time and money repairing and maintaining your vehicle. I'm going to use my 20 plus years experience restoring and repairing cars and trucks like this to show you the correct way to install parts from 1AAuto.com. The right parts installed correctly, that's going to save you time and money. Thank you, and enjoy the video.


In this video, I'm going to show you how to remove and reinstall a window regulator in this 1998 VW Beetle. The tools you'll need are a flathead screwdriver, Phillips screwdriver, T25 and T30 torx bits with a ratchet driver, a 10-mm socket and ratchet or wrench, and a drill with a quarter inch or larger drill bit. You'll also need some painter's tape.


First you'll have to use a screwdriver or a household putty knife to pull this panel out and off. You need to pull it straight out. Mine came off pretty easy. There're three clips here. It looks like somebody didn't pull straight and the clips all broke off. Then there're two Phillips screws behind here. Underneath, you're going to find three T20 screws. Once you get those off, use a door panel clip tool or a putty knife and you want to go in behind and pry out your door panel. Mine's actually been apart so many times that it just comes apart easily. Then you lift it up off your ledge and lock.

Just because it wasn't too clear here, there are a series of clips or pins that hold the door panel to the door around the perimeter. Because my door had probably been apart many times, they weren't really holding in that well, so you will have to do a little more work to get your door panel unclipped from the door. You want to pull out on the door panel. Once you have it free, then pull it up. Now in behind, depending on what options you have, disconnect everything. There's a connector here, these couple tabs. Your cable for your door handle pulls out and then unhooks. All these connections just have a little tab that presses and you can pull them out. Down here, pull these connectors off and the panel comes off.

There's plugs here and you pull those out. Right in behind, you can see there are some T30 screws. You'll probably find a plug on here. Mine's missing on this vehicle. My window just happens to be in the right position. That's because my regulator and motor are working fine. Usually, when you're regulator breaks, you hear the pop and the grinding noise and you're actually able to grab onto your window and move it up and down anyways. I'm going to show you how to reposition this if you need to. What you'll want to do is remove these three T30 screws that hold the motor. I'm just going to fast forward as I remove those three screws that hold the motor on.

I want to disconnect my window motor. You just pull up on there's a little clip here, pull up on it and the whole connector comes off. I can carefully pull my motor off and these are held in by teeth. You don't want to remove those. Now you can see that I can carefully take my window and move it up and down. I want to have it right there.
Now you want to loosen the two T30 screws. I'll speed up as I loosen up those two.Then take your window and kind of shake it back and forth a little bit and then pull it up into place. Use a little bit of painters tape to hold it up. Again, we'll fast forward as I put on some reinforcements.

Now what you want to do is unplug your speaker. Push in a couple tabs and pull it right up. Then pull out all these pins that hold the wiring harness to the panel. Pull this plug out and you can push this back through and then also pull this let's see, push this back down and through. Now remove the 10-mm bolt that holds this panel on.
Again, here we're going to use fast forward as we remove those bolts.

With a screwdriver, pry around the panel. Mine comes off easy because it looks like it's been off before. You may have to pry out up here just to get the panel loose. You have to bring it up and down and out like that. There's one more connector right back in here. There's a little tab on it. You just pull that tab down. Push our cable through. Push this connector through. And here's the panel with the regulator on it.

My regulator is fine, so I'm not going to remove it and then put another one back on. To remove it, use a drill and it's pretty simple. You drill out these rivets here. There's four one, two, and then another one here and then one right down here. You drill out those rivets and the regulator comes off. You put a new regulator on. You can just use some flathead bolts because you can see that the bolts really don't interfere with the cable at all. Just use flathead bolts. Put the bolts through this way and then put nuts and washers on this side and you can put your new regulator on. Like I said, this one's functioning fine, so I'm just going to reinstall the panel back in, but that's how you would do it.

To reinstall, it's a reverse of the procedure. You want to put your cable in first. Walk it up through. Bring your harness around and put this through and then back in here. Reconnect it. Make sure that lock stays through. Now bring your panel down. Get the regulator back in behind there and then bring it up into place and make sure the cable stays behind. I reach in here. There's three things you'll want to do. You'll want to put this boot for the lock rod, push it up through. Pull your cable through the boot here. With that in place, this has a little clip on it right in behind. Clip that into place. Then put the panel in.

I'm going to speed it up here for a second as I just start some of the bolts to hold the panel to the door panel. If you wanted to, you could put your motor on at any point. You could have actually put it on even before you put this together. That just ensures that your regulator doesn't come out. I'll fast forward through this. Reinstall the motor, use the three T30 screws, reconnect it. Make sure you pin all the wiring harnesses back in their place on the door. I'll put all the bolts back in for the perimeter of the panel and tighten them up. When you tighten them up, you want to get them nice and firm. You don't have to have them extremely tight. Carefully pull your window down. Go right into the track. Tighten those up nice and firm. Once those are tight, then your window should be right in place.

For the last part, I'm going to speed through putting the door panel back together. If you did want to see this in regular speed, just check out our other videos for the Volkswagen Beetle door panel installation.

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