Power Window Kit With Crank Handle Switches Coupe/Convertible Mustang 1965-1966

If you're a subscriber to our YouTube channel, you're probably aware we love adding modern amenities to our Mustangs, while still keeping that classic look. One of the areas that has been difficult to do in the past has been power windows. Most kits require an aftermarket switch assembly, which takes away from the classic look of your interior. Today, we're going to show you how to install power windows in your classic Mustang, while keeping your interior 100% original. These power window kits are available for all '64 through '73 coupe, convertible, as well as fastback Mustangs. They include detailed instructions, new regulators and scissors, power motors, switch assemblies, as well as all necessary wiring.

The most important part of these particular kits is going to be the regulator controller here. It's going to use a stock handle completely original. When installed in the vehicle when you push it up, the window will go up and when you push it down the window is going to go down. For this installation I'm going to need: Philips head screwdriver, right angle screwdriver, 3/8 ratchet, 1/2-inch socket, 7/16 socket, 3/8 socket, short extension, 2.5mm Allen key, pick, panel removal tool, punch, drill, right angle drill, 1/8-inch drill bit, 13/64 drill bit, 7/8 uni bit/7/8 drill bit, saw, multi-meter, wire crimpers, wire cutters, test lead, relay, primary wire, inline fuse, marker and safety glasses.

We're going to be installing the kit for all four windows in our 1968 Mustang coupe. If you're looking to just do the front windows you can go for a fastback kit which will fit your coupe or convertible doors as well. I'm going to start by removing the door panel so we can remove our original regulators. We'll start with the two bolts that hold the armrest on. I'll remove the door handle. Window cranks have these little covers over them so I'm going to use a razor blade to get the cover off then I'm going to unscrew it. Now I'm going to remove the bezel for our remote mirror. There is a tool to do this, but a lot of times a small screwdriver work. In our case, you can probably get it off by hand, as well. I'm going to use our door panel removal tool to remove our door panel.

Now, you want to put the crank back on and roll the window partially up. You want to go up until this screw here is visible. There are going to be three of these screws total. We're going to actually hold that channel to the window frame. We found removing those three screws is one of the easiest ways to get the regulator out of the car. This one's easy to get to, and if you look further back in the door, there's a hole cut out for the rear one and there's another hole forward for the front. Once you get the screws out it will release. You want to make sure you hold on to the glass. It is spring-loaded, so once it pops out it is going to go further forward up here. Slide the channel off then slide it backward, turn it over from the regulator. I'm going to remove our channel. The glass may stay, but just to be safe, we're going to carefully lower it down and let it sit in the door.

Now, we're going to remove the two retaining nuts for the rear part of the regulator. Simply just push that through and work on the front. Next, we'll remove the four bolts that hold the regulator to the door. Now, you want to hold the regulator as you loosen the last one. At this point, you want to slide the glass up and if somebody holds on to it to make sure it doesn't drop so you can remove the regulator. Since there are no wires going to the door for lights or speakers, we'll have to drill holes and actually use the grommet supplied in our kit. We'll start by drilling a hole in the door and drill between the hinges here then we're going to drill one to the side of our cap. Now we have our pilot hole drilled, we're going to open it up with 7/8.

Now that we have the hole in the door, the next step is put a hole inside the kick panel area to get the wire inside the car. To do so, we'll have to remove the door sill plates first and then remove our kick panel. Now, I'll remove the screws for our kick panel speakers. I'm going to slide off the kick panel. The grommet provided for the wiring harness is meant to come down and downwards. You want to make sure the hole you drill on the inside is down and inward from the one on the outside. Usually you'll go on your right through this slide here, which is the best place to go. Now, we're going to mount the switch assembly to our door. This is going to fit just like the factory one does right in this opening here. Basically, it will be like that when it's installed. It has the fit between the regulator so it's got an amount of angle where the base is right between the regulator and the wire harness is pointing away. I'll have to mark the holes, because we'll have to drill to mount this bracket.

The kit comes with a paper template to drill these holes. What I actually found you can carefully remove the rear plate from the switch and use that as a template. The metal is a lot easier to keep lined up than the paper. If I remove that and put our switch assembly aside. This hole here you want to set over the factory hole for the handle. You want this piece here centered between these two mounting holes for the regulator. Before we drill the holes, we're going to put our switch back together. Now, we'll drill these out.

The hardware for mounting the switch is included. They thread it into the back of the switch. You want to remove these three screws then we mount it we get the screw in the front here. Now, we'll wire up the switch before we install it. The outside spades on both ends are going to be your motor wires. It's going to be the blue and the brown. The secondary spade going inwards is going to be the two black wires on each side for your grounds. The center two here are going to be for your positives. We're going to install it so the harness is facing away. The power and ground get fed into the car and this harness here is going to go down to a power window motor. Start by fitting the power and ground out of the door. Put the switch in place, and then we'll screw down the supplied hardware.

Now, we're ready to install the new power regulator. This can be a little bit difficult because there's a lot more stuff involved when getting it fished down to the door. If you had trouble getting the old regulator out, it's going to be even harder to get it in because the power motor is located on the front. We're going to make sure before you get it all the way in the door, you do plug this into the motor, because once this is seated, it's going to be down in the corner here and you're not going to be able to reach it. The window regulator is going to shift with the safety bolt installed. You want to make sure you remove this before you put the regulator into the car, because the window will not work.

Start by putting the motor end in first by sort of tilting it in. At this point, you probably want to plug in your motor as soon as you can reach it. Fish it over far enough to get these two back bars through. I'm going to bring it back and get it up into place. Get these hand-tight for now, just to get it locate. And the regulator's in.

I'm going to reinstall the real roller channel. You want to clean these up once you remove them from the car, and then apply some new grease before you reinstall them. It slides on the real roller here, so slide it on and I'll put it up in place. Reinstall the nuts and tighten them down. I'm going to tighten the four bolts that hold the regulator to the door.

Next, we'll move on to the front channel here. Same idea: you want to clean it up once you have it out of the car, then add a fresh coat of grease before you install it. This channel is going to ride on this front roller here, then another one on the back. That's actually what's going to bolt the regulator to our door glass. Slide it in to slide it onto the front roller first and then slide it onto the rear. For now, we're just going to let it rest on there. Now, we've got the regulator at the right height so the holes are visible in this channel to screw it into our window frame.

With the old regulator that was easy, just turn the handle, we get it where we need to go. Now that we have power, we have to get power to the motor so we can move it up and down and be able to adjust it. At this point, you can hardwire it in or you can do what we did: we ran some test leads to the battery just to make sure everything works in the window before we actually hardwire it to our car. Now with power to the motor, put a window crank in place, push it down we can see our regulator goes down. Push it up we can get it up. We want to line up with this hole here and this hole here.

We're ready to reinstall our glass. I'll lower the glass down till it lines up. Now, we'll check our window, which can go down. Now, we're going to fish our wires to the conduit in the interior then move on the rear windows. Start by fishing the wire through the conduit. I'll fish it in the interior. I'll get the boot seated in the holes that we drilled. Now, we'll leave the wires hanging here for now. We're going to do the quarter next. We're going to fish the wires out, and they're all getting connected together.

Moving on the quarter windows, to get to the quarter window we're going to start by removing our back seat then we can remove these trim panels to access the windows. Remove the retaining nuts for the seatback. The window cranks are held on by a small retainer screw on the side. I'll remove the screws that hold to the body. Slide off the wind lace over here. I'll remove our water shield. We'll start by removing these two bolts here to release the track. I'll move on the four bolts for the regulator. I'm going to release the roller that goes in the bottom of the glass. It's right behind this bar here, so I'm going to use a pick, put it in and pull it right up.

Once you release the roller, you want to slide the glass by hand to get it out of the way. Now you can carefully remove your factor regulator. Once you remove the regulator, we have to remove the window as well as the channel if we have to get our new regulator into place. To do that, there is one bolt down here and then two at the top that have to be removed, along with the quarter post seal. We recommend putting a little bit of tape on the paint job so that when you pull out the window you don't scratch your paint.

The window's got to pivot forward to come out, which is why you have to remove the quarter post seal to give it more room to remove. If your quarter post seal is ripped or damaged, now would also be a good time to replace it. Ours is in pretty good shape so we're going to reuse them. To remove the glass, we're going to start by removing the two window stops. One located here and one located right here, then you want to slide the glass up and remove the track. We'll start with a lower bolt here. The uppers are through these two holes here. The window has to be all the way up in the framer or you won't be able to see the bolts.

Now, you want to maneuver the window forward then you can flip it up and out. Now, the track comes out the same way. The kit says you start with the rear regulators. Your switch is already mounted, so it's one less thing you have to worry about when installing. We're going to test-fit first because this motor here is going to have a little bit of interference, which is going to have to require some minor trimming. Everything lines up but the regulator is not. It has to sit flushed against this panel here, or it's not going to work properly. The motor is touching this cut out so we have to cut this section the bottom of the quarter panel out.

The issue for clearance is this bump-in right here. The regulator is not any wider than these bolts. What we're basically going to do is sear the inside of them and we'll cut straight up here to the bump. We'll go across against the inside of the hole and back there. Now we'll test-fit again. Once everything is lined up we can install the screws, and our regulator is mounted. You'll have to make sure your wires are free to move around once everything is tightened down. You don't want to pinch the wire between a regulator and our quarter panel. Our wires are loose and we're ready to move on.

Before we reinstall everything, we want to re-grease both the window track as well as both of the other tracks. Now, we're going to reinstall the track. Now, we need to hold the window track and get the glass in place. Now, the glass is in the track we'll slide it back up so we get the track mounted to the body. Now, we're going to reinstall the window stop. The other stops are a little harder to get to. It's actually now behind the motor right back here. There is room to get in from this side to hold it and then get a bolt in there and tighten it down. Now we're going to reinstall the window roller. The roller is going to go in this channel right at the bottom here and then the stud from the regulator is going to pop in place. It's easier to put the roller in the channel and then install the stud. We may have to bump the window up a little bit in the channel to get enough space with the arm over then pop it in.

Now, we're going to install the secondary channel. Again, we're going to put the roller in the channel first and get it into place. Now, we're ready to test our window. We'll connect 12 volts to our wiring. We have our handle. Up and it goes down. Now that the window is working correctly, we can reinstall our quarter post seal. Before we reassemble everything, we're going to put our front window up we're going to check our alignment. You're going to want to make sure you have a good tight seal between your quarter window and your front window. Ours looks pretty good.

Make sure also this doesn't catch on the quarter window if it's coming out. Two screws at the top and the one screw at the bottom that hold the track to the body. There's movement there, so if you have to adjust your window, that's where you'll want to do it. In our case, we were up by the paint markings on those brackets for the original bolts. The alignment is pretty good. Now we can start with the reassembly and the wiring for our power window system. In the case of our ground it comes with a short wire. We're just going to grab the bare metal down here at the bottom. The power wire will fish down and run with our tail light harness up under the dash and connect those powers together. I'm going to drill a small hole for our ground. I'm going to put a zip tie around the motor and the wire just to keep everything together.

At this point, you'll want to repeat the process with the passenger's quarter and then the passenger's side door then we can finish reinstalling our interior. Now, I'll reinstall the crank. You want it facing forward. That way up is up and down is down. Now we'll start reassembling our door panel. Now we're ready to reinstall our window cranks. The kit includes these Allen head screws which will work and thread in, but in the case of our 1968, the head screw sits up too high and the cover is not going to fit. We're going to reuse the original screws with real seat flush enough for our covers to fit but actually we'll thread into the new switches, as well. Re-stick on the original disc.

Now, move on to the wiring. The window is going to require a switched power. Unfortunately, under the dash of your Mustang there's not going to be anything strong enough to power them without blowing a fuse so you have to go with a relay. A relay is pretty simple. We're using a five-post standard relay that is going to be available at any auto parts store. You're going to start by connecting a fuse link to the battery itself or a primary wire to your red lead into your relay. The green wire will get 12-volt switch somewhere beneath our dashboard. The blue wire goes to ground and the orange and yellow are both powered which will run our windows.

You want to connect the power leads for your windows to the yellow lead from the relay. That's the lead that's going to have 12 volts of current when the relay is open. We connected the orange lead; it's all going to have 12 volts when the relay's closed the ignition's off. We'll start by disconnecting our battery. Now, we'll connect our primary lead to our battery terminal. You can also connect it to your starter solenoid, and we'll start fishing our wire. We're going to fish our wire down the side and then across. I'm going to go through a factory hole in the firewall. Now, I need to tap into a 12-volt switch source.

You can hook up the constant if you want. That way you can put the windows up and down when the key's not on, but you can also drain the battery pretty fast. We're going to stick with switched. We're on this wire here from the ignition switch to our stereo, so we're going to use that. Start by connecting our primary feed from our battery. Now, we'll connect our power window leads to our constant power. We've got our 12-volt switch trigger, the wire under the dash that we found earlier. Tie it to a factory ground on the dash. We're going to install the fuse and check everything up before we hide our wiring. Key off and we've got nothing. Turn to accessory, the relay's open and our window works like it's supposed to. Now we can hide our wires, reinstall our door seal plate, and reinstall our kick panel. And our installation is finished.

There you have it. The modern convenience of power windows while still keeping the look of the factory interior. This isn't the easiest installation, so expect to spend two to three hours per window. You'll be back on the road in no time.