Tech Article Title
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Author
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Date
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Window Switch Cleaning |
Sallad
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2004 |
This write-up is for 85-87 4000s. Since I do not have any other kind of Audi,
I'm assuming this will be the same for the Quattros and CGT's.
First off you'll have to remove the switches from the car. This is easy enough,
just press on the center of the switch and it'll pop down through the panel.
Rear door switches are removed buy pulling them out. Here it is out of the car.
Once you have the switches out, insert a small flat blade screwdriver between
the rocker switch and the outer housing, around the middle of the switch are the
tabs that hold it in. Pry the rocker out of the housing. Be careful to keep the
switch upright.
Once the rocker is out, you'll see two flat pieces of some kind of fiber/plastic
material. This is what the rocker pushes down on to make the contacts move.
This next part is a little more "tricky", on my first switch I ripped the
plastic housing a little. So take your time.
It's easier if you use two or more little screwdrivers. Starting on one side,
insert a screwdriver into one of the tabs along the base of the housing. Then
put another screwdriver into the other tab on the same side. Now pry the housing
up a little, just so the one side clears the tabs. Repeat on the other side.
Once all four tabs have released the side of the housing, slide the housing up
and out of the way.
Now you'll have access to the contacts that need to be cleaned. As you can see
in my photo, the contacts need some cleaning.
There are two ways you can do this. One is to pry off the little flat contact in
the middle of the upper and lower contacts (the contact that moves up and down)
This is done by popping off the side opposite the contact points. Then it'll
just fall out.
A small warning though, once these little pieces of metal are out, it's pretty
tough to get them back in. I had to bend part of the metal to fit it back on.
The switch still works, it just doesn't have any resistance or and "clicking"
sound when using it. This turns the switch into a smooth, quiet switch, that
just barely touching the switch will activate the windows. But myself I prefer
to have some resistance to the switches (a la OEM), I didn't like the "touch
sensitive" feel of the switch.
The second way, and faster/easier way, is to just sand down the contacts while
leaving them in place. Make sure to sand down ALL the metal contacts and both
sides. The way I did this was to wrap a small strip of sand paper around a small
flat tip screwdriver and used the screwdriver like a little sanding block.
Once all the contacts are clean and shiny again, put everything back together.
Starting with the outer housing, just slide it back down, then put the two
little square flat pieces back into the guides and slide into place. Then just
pop the rocker back on and you're done.
Only one window worked when I got the car and after cleaning the switches they
all work perfectly.
One final note. One of the members said he replaced all the bulbs in the
switches with LED's. But all of my switches already have LED's in them. Even a
spare switch I grabbed from a junk yard has LED's in them. (the switch in the
photos are from a junk yard.) So I don't know if the LED's were a model/year
thing, or just Canadian ones had them, I don't know. Strange.
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