Doors are always an issue with old cars. Because they get so much mechanical action they tend to be problematic. The other day I was driving with the window down and when I pulled into a store it wouldn’t go up. Hmmm I said. So I went into the store and, just like clockwork, Murphy’s law kicked in and it started raining. Pouring actually. I drove home with the window down and got a little wet.
To fix it I took off the door panel and found that it was missing several prongs that hold it in place. Then I had to remove the inner door panel. This actually is a cool feature of the Tahoe and makes it relatively easy to work on the inner door parts. There is a trick to getting this panel off while sliding the attached window regulator out of the tracks. This trick is explained in this video.
Once I had the inner door panel on my bench I could see that one of the bolts that holds the regulator to the panel was loose and blocking the mechanism. I found the nut and secured the regulator in place.
When I was doing this I did not pay attention to the spring in the regulator. It is there to help offset the weight of the window. It is super powerful and when it was free to move it swung around my bench and out of sheer luck I was not hurt. Beware when ever you see a spring on a car part. There is likely a lot of force stored there and it is dangerous. I could have easily lost some fingers in this process.