For a long time every once in a while when I'd roll up my window I'd hear a sound like metal hitting glass but everything worked and looked fine. Yesterday however I heard the noise and the window stopped. When I got home I took apart the door to find 2 loose bolts and a bunch of shredded metal. It was not very much fun. The wiring harness had ripped out of the motor which is what caused the window to stop, but what caused the wiring to rip out was the fact that the whole lifting mechanism had moved and was no longer braced by the door frame. I'm just praying this is covered by the extended warranty

 

damn! how many years and miles? i hope you are covered!

 

its a 2002 with ~65k miles. I think what happened was one of the bolts backed out somehow and then that threw everything off balance and placed too much pressure on the other bolts. I can to that conclusion because one of the empty bolt holes was not misshapen but the other two with loose bolts obviously are misshapen

 

This is rather common. As soon as you hear any unusual noise from the window regulators or see misalignment it's very important to pull the door panel and check those bolts. If you catch it in time all you need to do is tighten them, if it goes on for too long then the result is what you see here.

 

duly noted for the future

 

is this what you were talking about?

 

Taking my panels off this weekend. I just assumed the noise was normal like creaks and squeaks...

 

I need to know if I can separate that section you pictures. The inner structural area is whats damaged and I need to know if I can remove that part from the outermost painted panel so I can put the painted panel on a new structure

 

I am sure if you do A LOT of drilling, cutting, and welding it can be done. But typically that (what I have in the picture) is the minimum a body would replace.

 

looks like I'll be taking a trip to Subaru next week I'll remove my door panel before hand though so that they can shove their diagnostic fee up their ***

 

good luck buddy!

 

good luck Matt.

 

I'm going in to the dealership (I hate those people) before work today with pictures of the two bolts and saying "ok, what do we do from here and is it covered under warranty?" and they'll go "well we're going to have to charge you $100 for diagnostics and then decide from there" at which point I'll go "tell ya what, I'll come back tomorrow with the door panel removed and you can look at it right here, no other 'diagnostics' really need to be done"

will post up results later

 

well, the POS third party warranty purchased with the car was good for 24 months/24k miles from when the car was purchased, therefore, it has since expired.

New door from subaru $550+tax+paint

 

damn, that sucks... junk yard?