Window winder repair

The window winder on one of the sliding doors of my 1300 EFI Hijet was slipping. I took it off and found that most of the section of the flexible cable that engages the sprocket of the winder was badly corroded. The cable consists of an inner core of stranded steel wire surrounded by a helical coil (into which the sprocket teeth engage). Embedded into this outer coil is some sort of fabric that I imagine is to keep the coil turns in position. As well as the corrosion, I found this fabric had gone hard so not allowing the teeth to engage properly. Anyway - I looked on ebay - no luck. I phoned the local dealer and they said £100 and something (I didn't listen for the rest!).

This post is to say that I managed, with difficulty, to fix the old winder. I drilled out (5mm drill) the three places where the winder sprocket fits on as I assumed the teeth were worn. They weren't, so that bit was not really necessary. I then carefully opened out the channel where the window 'down' end stop is, and removed it. It was then possible to remove the cable together with the bracket that fixes to the window. I cleaned up the cable with WD40 and a wire brush as best I could and then very carefully managed to unscrew the window bracket from the cable. The other end of the cable was a bit manky so I hacksawed about 30mm off and was then able to screw the bracket (remembering to keep it the right way round) onto this end. So now the winder sprocket would act on an unworn part of the cable. I fed the cable back into the channel and into the sprocket. However, I had to refit the endstop 30mm farther up the channel due to the bit of cable I had cut off. A heavy pair of wire cutters is ideal to peen the channel (don't cut it through!!). All this means is that the window won't open quite as far - a small price to pay to save about £150ish. In my case I refitted the handle/sprocket assembly with 5mm nuts and bolts. Thoroughly greased the channel and job done.