I took the advice to get twosrus gears, and after the gears came I took apart my doors to fix them, only to find a busted regulator gear.
I had to buy new regualtor assemblies to fix this problem. Here’s how you can tell which gear is broken without dissasembly of your doors:
1) If the window pauses for a second but continues on its own to move up or down, it is a bad motor gear. What happens is when the motor gear moves to it’s bad spot, it obviously won’t turn the regulator gear untill the motor gear spins back to where it still has teeth. Then it will re-engage the regulator gear untill it comes to the bad spot again. This will cause the window to stop for a second or 2 each time it passes the bad spot, but will continue again on it’s own.
2) If the window pauses and doesn’t resume by itself, but just makes a horrible grinding or repetitive clicking noise and you have to give it a little push or pull to resume operation, you have a bad regulator gear. What happens is the motor will spin the regulator untill it hit’s the regulator gear’s bad spot. Since there are no more usable teeth on that spot of the regulator gear, the motor gear will just keep spinning against it causing the grinding noise and the window stops moving. When this happens, you need to give the window a little help so that the busted regulator gear turns enough to re-engage with the motor gear with its remaining teeth. This scenario IS NOT REPAIRABLE with twosrus gears.
3) Another problem that can happen which will lock the window in place would either be a power failure, or the window cable gets wrapped around a piece of metal. There is normally a little plasitc piece on these metal tabs that the cable rests against so as not to get intertwined with anything. Over time, the plastic tabs can pop off or break. If this happens, the cable may slip around the metal tab that once held the plastic and jam the window. Repeated attempts to raise or lower the window in this scenario may damage your cable, causing it to start to fray or snap. If you believe this could be your problem, I would recommend removal of the door panel and checking it out to make sure the cable isn’t stuck on anything.
This documentation in no way replaces the Toyota MR2 Repair Manuals. The purpose of this content is only to provide supplementary information to fellow MR2 enthusiasts. Midship Runabout and its contributing authors will not be held responsible for any injury or damages that may occur as the result of practicing any of the methods or procedures described within this website. Article and photo submissions are property of the contributing author.
