458 Electric Window problems?

2013 458 Spider with 9000 miles has gone from windows working perfectly to sounding like the cable is shredded. One day they work and the next day, won't go down or up without sounding terrible. I KNOW the cable HAS to be wadded up in the electric window transmission.. No reason, nothing got stuck- just happened.
So I've removed the door panel, which although has a TON of fasteners is pretty straight forward.

With just ONE screw in the interior door handle area, to remove the plate and handle, the center section of the door panel is held entirely by snaps which with moderate pressure pop out of the door frame. This exposes about ten allen bolts that need to be removed to get the rest of the door panel off. Straight forward, but with FINE threads on machine screws, as these cars age, these bolts WILL give grief in coming out. They're coming off with a lot of resistance and this car is like new. If they were slightly harder to remove, the threads would be seizing. I've been there, done that. Fifty years of doing mechanical work, I know the deal.

With the window operator moving the window up and down every time the door handle is touched, maybe MORE than the small operator can handle?? I'll post again when I've dissected the motor and cable assembly.

Disappointing to have stupid problems like this on a 330K car!

 

Removed the motor and cable assembly. Cable was totally shredded as I suspected. Plastic pulley, plastic housing.
Utter garbage assembly. A unit that is destined to fail. What a shame. I found a post written several years ago about the windows failing. An ebay seller has FIVE of them in stock at $800 apiece. I installed an assembly in an Accura MDX a month ago I paid fifty bucks for. Similar design. I may consider manufacturing the cable pulley and the housing and make it out of aluminum. BUT the cable shredded. WHY? Fluke or a design problem? The drive pulley can be made out of a more substantial material, but if the cable is self destructing, what good would that do. Did the pulley fail first or did the cable shred causing a bit of damage to the drive pulley?

Although at first glance the windows opening and shutting an inch every time a person opens a door, is kind of a WOW factor, the design isn't up to the task. Hundreds of extra operations a normal window isn't exposed to. The 9000 miles on my car didn't occur in hundreds of small trips, but road trips to Monterey and mostly longer day trips. The window didn't operate THOUSANDS of cycles.

 

I guess I'm going to have to figure out how to take photos with my phone and post them to this site. If I was twelve years old I'd already know, but I'm MUCH older.

I'm going to make a new cable up, and try and reassemble the unit. Think brake cable like on a bicycle, with a couple of crimped on ends. I'm the first at my local Ferrari dealer to order an assembly for the window, but it's three weeks out, and I THINK I can fix it. I've got a new $760.00 assembly on it's way regardless. To remove and replace the unit, without attempting to fix it is about an hour to two hour job. Not hard, but the holes in the very robust door have a heavy foam covering attached with glue, that must be removed to get the window regulator out. I meticulously cut the glue out so they can be reused, if I can't order them new. This car is beautiful, one doesn't want to start hacking it apart to fix issues that shouldn't be occurring. This car compared to my older 328's and Testarossa's is stunningly well made.
Where the doors in the 328's look like Guido welded them up in beginners welding class, the 458 doors remind me of the Rolls Royses I worked on years ago. They're a beautifully crafted ASSEMBLY, made out of really heavy material.
Honest to goodness MACHINE SCREWS with machined nuts hold everything together. Not ONE sheet metal screw anywhere-. the real deal. I THINK the entire door is aluminum, the only items magnetic are the nuts and studs.
Really impressive. Now if only the window regulator wasn't positively wimpy!

My earlier statement on the screws coming out hard, is going to be a real issue in the future. The threads are all steel nutserts in the door. Looking at the threads with a magnifying glass, they were already stripping out slightly. BAD SIGN. Every thread should have a bit of antiseize applied. A couple of these threads seizing up in later years will turn a two hour job into a frustrating eight hour job. Nothing worse than a simple bolt seizing up to ruin your day.

 

How time flies by Four years ago on my window repair. hgoodwinii- you may be out of luck buying the foam from Ferrari but McMaster Carr in Los Angeles has simply the most amazing inventory of stick on foam sealing tapes. A friend of mine manufactures clean rooms, and I was checking out his supply of self adhesive backed foam he bought from them. A REALLY broad selection of different sizes and densities. Their online catalog is pretty amazing and I think they'll sell to anyone. Pretty much the BEST vendor of supplies in America.

I ended up just replacing my wadded up assembly with a NEW Ferrari part. Some times a person can't spend an undue amount of time reinventing the wheel. Been working fine for four years. I DID forget to put my battery maintainer on my car for a week or two, and my battery went completely dead, WITH my windows all the way closed. The door opened fine, much to my surprise. I really thought this was going to be a real issue but it didn't turn into one. My completely DEAD original battery was brought back to a full charge with my battery maintainer, with ZERO issues. I again figured losing all power was going to be a disaster, but not a single warning to tow or drive my car to the nearest Ferrari dealer came up on my dash. Life is good.

 

The motor and window lift were an assembly. I'm pretty sure it was already greased, just ready to install. The part from Ferrari was the lift and motor.

I hate to say it, but after four years I can't picture this job very clearly, Twenty years ago I had almost a photographic memory, and could remember every car job to the most minute detail. Terrible to be getting old.