So I guess to start this story off back in October i bought a nice Zr2. The following month while I was having a nice drive with the driver side window all the way down....bam no dice! When I tried to power it back up I got nothing from it. I ended up doing the direct 12v trick to the window motor and it went up so I replaced the door switches and it worked fine. No big deal.



So a couple days ago same scenario, window was all the way down and worked fine when I got home. I rolled them down to air out the truck while I tried to replace my shackles with no luck. After several hours I called it quits and packed everything up and when I went for the switch....NOTHING.



I even tried the 12v trick again but just got the motor making some running sound. Out of options because it was getting dark and it was going to rain that night I quickly drilled out the rivets, pulled the sob out of track and propped the window with a wrench that manged to wedge in there nicely. Honestly I've had it with the power window on my driver side and im going back to the good old reliable crank design.



So onto what everyone who clicked this is looking for, I researched a bit but didn't really find any power to crank window mods just crank to auto. So looking at how those were done it seems pretty straight forward. Both the auto and crank regulators are exactly alike except one has the motor and one has the place for the crank. So i bought a manual regulator for 32 bucks and a pack of levers for 8 bucks. (sorry not familiar with what they're called exactly lol)

Right now I am waiting for the parts to arrive (I believe next Tuesday) and my biggest question is that all I have to do is drill/saw out about an inch wide hole in my panel right? or will it be too far a distance for it to work?

If I played my cards right I wont have to worry about my driver side window again. I'll have one side crank one side powered. Ill bet that'll confuse some people

I'll throw some pics up during the process of putting it in and feel free to request any specific pics you want ill try to get them in.

 

Well it turns out this is all possible you can convert to crank. My handle and manual regulator arrived yesterday and after several hours of messing with it I had the door on with a working crank window. I think the most difficult thing was getting the greasy regulator back in the tracks. Once you do that you have the option to put rivets in it, find some nuts and bolts that fit well, or the worst possible way, redneck it and use a bunch of zip ties xD. This is just temporary because eventually they will snap but does the job ok until I find what I need. After that I used some bearing grease and put it on the tip of the spline for the crank. I then put the door back on to mark the spot to drill and pulled it back off. I then drilled about a 1/2 an inch hole in the door where the spot was and and put the door back on. This is where I faced my problem. The spline didn't stick out very far and the crank kept popping off. Maybe that's because my door isn't on as tight as can be because of broken clips. So eventually I was able to push the crank on far enough by pushing the plastic surrounding the base of the handle so the metal clip would go into its slot but the door is still pushing hard against the crank but it works. If the same thing happens I'd advice making a hole big enough so the crank base goes in the door if that happens but there is probably a better way to do it. I'll post some pics of the finished product feel free to ask questions.


Here's basically the procedure to remove/replace the regulator:

Manual To Power Windows: How To - S-10 Forum

 

Trucks with manual windows have different door panels, that's why your crank isn't fitting properly

 

I would love to do this on my Blazer. Where did you find the parts? Everywhere I look has the door internals for a lot more then that.

 

I'v noticed but they're pretty similar in aspects of size. Its seems that the manual ones seem to have a indentation where the crank goes. It's not hard to get around. My handle popped in but is still rubbing because of the curv of the door. You could just widen the hole to accept the base of the handle couldn't you? On top of that there a lot of different cranks out there so it would vary person to person on how it would fit.

 

Ebay is your friend

I looked around too and saw outrageous prices from some companies.

Here's a cheap used one to get an idea of what the price is:

95 96 97 S10 S15 GMC Jimmy Blazer Manual Passenger Door Window Regulator | eBay

 

I'm sure you could, personally I don't think that would look very good. You would see the hole if you cut it out enough that it doesn't interfere with the crank.