Project R53, Window Adjustment

Another thing that has bothered me since I got the Mini, was the horrible wind noise from the passengers window at speed. It needed fixing.

At about 100kph, or lower if there was a decent crosswind, the passengers side door glass would emit a rather annoying sound. Obviously on a 700km or so trip home on the open road this started to get rather tiresome, but thankfully it wasn’t there all the time, and you could drive around it to a degree by raising or lowering speed.

The window was operating correctly, including the auto drop on the door opening, but still, there was a noise. A decent inspection, and comparison of the window to the drivers side one that didn’t make a noise showed that the front of the door glass was sitting a couple of cm lower than it should be. Instead of seating up in the seal above the glass, it sat a good distance below it. That’d be a good place to start.

Adjustment of the window glass sounds like a real pain, but in reality its a lot easier than expected.

From what I had read, I thought that removing the door card to do the adjustment was the easiest way, but after failing to remove the door arm pad and access one of the door card screws (I swear someone has glued the pad to the door, it doesn’t budge no matter how much I press the clip to release it) I tried another way.

The official BMW way is to remove the waist moulding on the outside of the door and use a special tool to rotate the adjusters. Now, I don’t have the tool (looks kinda like a C tool for adjusting platform adjustable suspension), but had heard you could use a screwdriver.

Sure enough, I removed the trim with the window up and was greeted by the sight of the two adjuster wheels, right up in easy access.

The adjuster is a large nut that secures the glass to the regulator, as seen in this photo

Using a narrow flat blade and a hammer I tapped the adjuster around. Lefty loosey, righty tighty. With both adjusters slightly looser, but not loose enough that the glass moves around freely, I gave the front of the glass a yank upwards. This pulled the glass up slightly, whilst leaving the rear more or less where it was.

After a few trials and tests, moving the glass up and down until it was just right, I used my hammer and screwdriver to tighten the adjuster wheels again.

I got the glass so it sits firmly into the seal front to back, and still operates correctly. There is now no gap around the glass.

There is a proper adjustment spec for this, which I think is measured with the glass at “open drop” but the door held closed against the latch, and should be 5mm from the lip of the window seal to the top edge of the glass. There are more details on other sites about this, but I chose to go with sight and feel instead, as it’s an old car now and everything is getting a little more worn out that when it was new.

You can see from the dirt mark that was previously behind the seal how far up the front of the glass has come

The rear is about the same as it was

You could previously see the top of the glass here, now it sits in the seal

I gave the glass a thorough clean inside and out, and under the trim, and reassembled.

A quick drive down the open road was promising, with no wind noise, but it was an intermittent issue so will need to do more testing, but I’m fairly sure that is what the issue was.