I’ve been driving my car now for a few weeks without an operational driver’s side window. My car doesn’t have air-conditioning and it’s been way too hot not to have a functioning window. But I’ve had to make do. I roll down the passenger side window and open up the vents. This works okay on the highway but city driving is pretty hot and unbearable.

My window needed to be fixed but after just spending quite a bit of money on my brakes, I was in no position to fix a window. It looked like it would have to stay forced up. But two weeks of suffering in the heat changed my mind.

I did something that surprised myself. I went to the library and signed out a repair manual. I thought I would try to see if I could fix it myself. Anyone that knows me knows that I’m not mechanically inclined. I always take my car in for servicing, but I heard that the window could be expensive. Fixing a window seemed like something I could do, and if I messed it up somehow, at least I would still be able to drive the car. So I decided to tackle the job.

I took the car over to my dad’s so I could use all his tools and get some advice and assistance on it. Dads are great.

So we took the door apart and we could see the problem right away. There were two wires that ran from the handle pulley to the track that that the window sits on. One of these wires was broken. First we tried to see if we could just attach another wire to it to get it to work. It didn’t.

So I went to the wreckers and bought a new regulator. We followed the instructions and managed to put it in with no problems at all. My dad and I looked at each other in disbelief. I rolled the window up and down. Yup, it worked. We still couldn’t believe it.

“That was almost too easy,” said dad.

“Yeah, we didn’t even have that one stubborn bolt that won’t budge.”

“And no extra pieces left over.”

“Pretty good, eh?”

“What did we do wrong?” joked my dad.

It was great! My car now has a window that rolls up and down. You never really appreciate something so small and trivial on a car until it doesn’t work. I’m glad that it does now. I will be able to survive what is shaping up to be a long, hot summer.