Welcome to the Crown Vics ETC blog!

On April 6, 2000, I purchased a 1998 Ford Crown Victoria LX HPP with 23,490 miles. I decided to start a little website for it featuring a running log of my experiences with the car. Vic 1.0 was retired in 2015 due to rust and electrical issues. Vic 2.0 was a 2006 P71 in Blue Pearl that belonged to my boyfriend. It was a Ford demo and never saw actual police use. It was damaged in September of 2018 with well over 186,000 miles. It was replaced by Vic 3.0 in October 2018, a 2008 P71 in Silver Birch with 120,971 miles. To read posts prior to 2010, click a link at right, or go to Crown Vics, ETC.

Friday, February 26, 2021

2008 Ford Crown Victoria Window Switches

Crown Victorias are usually pretty beefy cars.  Part of the reason is that they are simple.  What cars tend to be maintenance nightmares?  Cars that are "complicated".

One part that seems to have issues on the later cars are the window switches.

Vic 3.0's driver's window switch started to act strange not long after I took the car over.  I'd have to "finesse" the switch to get the window to go up, but not all the time.  It got worse and worse, and I started thinking I better start looking for a used set of switches.   

Of course, what happened?  It stopped working... with the window OPEN.

Now, I had it in back of my head Mystery Mechanic had a set of switches in his basement.  I looked around and found them.  BUT, I quickly discovered they worked, but had the same problem!  We then remembered that his '08 ALSO had the issue, and the part was the bad one.

I was at least able to put the window back up.

I decided to take apart my totally-toasted one to see if it could be fixed.  I thought perhaps some contacts would be cleaned.  In the end, I couldn't fix them and just gave up.

A trip to our favorite junk yard later, and I had a new (used) part in-hand.  This was in September 2020 and so far, they still work fine.  

There may be folks out there who know how to fix the switches, or may want to try it.  Below are some photos to help those people out.  

NOTE:  The switch style changed one last time, I think in 2009 or 2010.

Ford part number:  5L1T-14540-AWB

Exploded view of parts

Little dust/water guards slip right off... notice the copper connectors

View of bottom with connectors

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