Manual to power locks and windows

[Hoodbj]

I am working on putting power door locks and windows into my non power truck. I got both doors working and only have the holes to drill in the doors and cab. On the donor vehicle it looks on the cab that the hole is oval instead of round. Is this necessary? I was planning on buying a hole saw but was curious if it would hurt to just drill a round hole instead of oval. It looks like the door and cab are both marked where to drill so location shouldn't be hard. I'll post some pics of the swap when I get the holes drilled and wiring hidden back under dash. Here is a couple of pics of the holes, the oval is on the cab and the round is the door. Thanks for any help

 

[Hoodbj]

And the oval, I should've mentioned, these holes are where the wiring passes through the door and into the cab. Covered by a rubber flexible boot.

 

[Hoodbj]

My apologies, I should've posted this in electrical/wiring possibly.

 

[79K10]

i want to get power doors in mine too! pita leaning over to roll the passenger side down lol

 

[cobra20]

it is a pain to get the connectors and rubber boot through the oval hole in the body

 

[79K10]

did the thread get moved? lol ill need more info than that

 

[cobra20]

What info do you need I've pulled apart 3 different sets of power doors from the junkard so I've gotten it down now pretty good lol

 

[79K10]

can i just find some power doors and pretty much just drill the holes and wire them up?
thanks

 

[chengny]

can i just find some power doors and pretty much just drill the holes and wire them up?
thanks

Yep - you can do that.

But I wish you luck finding a set of usable (loaded) doors for a 1973 C10. It's hard enough locating decent door shells for the 81-87 series. Ones with all the PW & PL components and the interconnecting wiring harness are even harder.

The good news is - you can keep your non-power door panels and adapt them to accept the PW & PL switches easy enough.

 

[79K10]

yeah? just buy motors and switches and stuff huh? yeah that sounds like a plan! I need to look into that for sure! thanks

 

[chengny]

If your doors are still sweet OEM steel - I would definitely hang on to them. You can always acquire the necessary PW/PL parts as they become available and then kind of gradually integrate them into the truck.

Drill your holes in the jamb and door. When you have the flexible rubber transit boots and the wiring harness in hand, run the outer two sections of the harness from inside the cab and into the doors. This part takes awhile - trust me it's the hardest part of this modification. When you are done, just leave the wires dead-ended inside the shells.

Next, run the cross-cab section of the harness under the dash and connect it to the left/right door sections.

One day, pull your door panels off, temporarily connect the associated motors and switches to the harness, power it up and test everything out.

If everything functions as designed, the final step is to gut the doors of all the manual components. Install the power window regulators, mount/connect the linkage for the lock motors, connect them electrically and test them out again. Do this to one door at a time. Also I suggest doing this to the passenger's side first for practice. This is for the simple reason that - if you had to pick a window that does not operate you would pick the passenger side.

 

[cobra20]

Yeah if you were going to try and find power doors from the factory for a 1973 C10 you would be out of luck because the power options didn't come into play till 1977

 

[robert8096]

The PO of my 74 attempted to do this swap. He used doors off an 83. If your doors are good and you have a way of cutting the hole in the cab for the wires without removing the door then use your existing doors. I looked at drilling the hole from the inside but decided against it because to get it in the correction position on the outside I would end up behind the emergency brake assembly. Plus the doors needed to come off for paint.

Around here you can get a complete door cheaper than buying the innards. Also get the P/W wiring harness and PL relay from under the dash.

PO of mine did not cut the holes in the cab, he just let them route thru the door opening. He ran the wires from the pass side to driver side and one from the fuse box. To work the windows you had to supply voltage from the fuse box (constant hot no fuse) to the correct wire then get someone to work the switch on the door. Power locks were non op.

 

[chengny]

I don't know if this will work on earlier model years. But, if you look closely, there should be a series of dimples on the door jamb:

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The top and bottom ones line up with the mounting holes in the rubber conduit flanges. They can be drilled - without dropping the door - to accept either a pop rivet or a screw.

Also, the easiest way to make the hole for the wiring harness is with a step drill. The thickness of the harness requires a big one. I picked up a Klein #9 on ebay a couple of years ago (for $30! - they generally retail for over $150):

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But Harbor Freight sells a 2 piece set that includes a bit that goes up to 1 3/8":

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This set goes for only $18.98 and it should last for a while.

Using a step drill, you can also make the holes for the harness - without dropping the doors.

Unfortunately, if the doors need to be drilled, they have to come off anyway.

 

[79K10]

ill keep an eye out for the complete doors i think, maybe ill get lucky and find some... untill i get this thing timed, carb to stop flooding and the master cylinder swapped out, PW will be on hold lol