A buddy was telling me about how a couple of his Disco's windows had fallen in and broken because the window regulator rollers had come apart. One of my windows was also chattering as it went up/down, and lube did not help. Upon inspection I found that the rollers really aren't rollers at all, they are just seized up lil bits of plastic that just slide in the tracks. They don't actually roll at all.... So, I went researching to find the easiest way to repair them, and hopefully upgrade them, before I had a window fall and break. I found one supplier who sells metal roller wheels, for about $38 each! The D2 needs 3 rollers for each front window, and 1 roller for each rear window, for a total of 8 rollers for the vehicle, so I thought those prices were ridiculous. And of course, there's always new window regulators available, but I figure why replace them if they can be repaired and upgraded. I remembered from my maintenance guy days that shower doors had nice lil Delrin rollers with bearings in them, so I measured the roller on a spare regulator I had lying around (25.5mm round by 5mm thick), and bought a couple versions of shower door wheels I hoped would work from Amazon.

I found that with just a lil bit of sanding on the edges to thin the wheel down, the versions I link to below work really well. These are 25mm round and 5.5mm thick, but need to be 5mm thick, so sanding about .25mm off each side to bring the Delrin down to the surface of the bearing cage worked great. They come 8 to a pack, for $13. That's enough to do all the windows on the Disco...



To get the old rollers off the regulator arms, I just used a grinder to grind off the head of the old roller, and tap the shaft and wheel out with a hammer.





Then I used a flat washer, a locking star washer (sourced from good 'ol Ace Hardware) and some red Loctite to attach the new roller to the arm.



After install and testing, they seem to work great. Windows roll smooth as butter, no more chattering or slow spots. They seem to operate about 20% faster than before, and the motors sound quieter like they aren't having to work as hard. Not sure what the longevity will be, but I'm betting a sealed ball bearing with a Delrin outer wheel that actually rolls should outlast a lump of soft plastic on an aluminum shaft that just slides and binds.... fingers 🤞

Hope this helps, Good Luck, and Happy Modding! 👍

 

Great write up. Thanks. This is a pretty common failure point on our D2’s.

 

Had some binding on my passenger front window the other day. Couple of clunks and bangs and irregular window motion. I pulled the door panel off to find one of the the top rollers wheels was MIA, well, half of it was in the bottom of the door. Luckily the tin foil arms hadn't bent yet so I pulled the regulator and ordered the delrin wheels, and then installed them tonight per the instructions above. I haven't reinstalled the regulator yet but I'm not expecting any surprises. The wheels slide super smooth in the tracks. Just think, if LR had spent an extra $13 on these janky window regulators, in a $40k truck, none of us would ever had to suffer through this BS. This is an excellent write-up and it's worth doing as preventive maintenance. Thank you.

 

So for anyone who hasn't had the pleasure of experiencing this and is curious I'm adding some photos of the typical carnage. This regulator is actually off my daily, which bound up over the winter and had the window switch unplugged to prevent further damage. I decided to put the rehabbed regulator into this truck this morning. Believe it or not, I think this one can be straightened and saved with new rollers. As cheap as I am (and having five trucks to care for), I will definitely give it a shot.

The top right side wheel broke off its center, sometimes they do this, other times they just disintegrate and break apart. Without the wheel to roll/slide in the track the arm can bind and this puts pressure on all the other arms, one or more of which will usually succumb to the torque put out by the motor and bend. In this example the idler, or maybe pivot, arm was the weak link. There is some minor deformation to the arm with the broken wheel but it's not evident in the pic. You can also see where the bent up arm was scraping against the other arm as the window was being used. You can sometimes get a few cycles out of them before your passenger comments that the window isn't working to their liking and catastrophic failure ensues.



The packet of wheels I received was slightly undersized and the factory wheels are actually slightly over 25mm. I'm not sure how accurate this HF caliper is so maybe the original wheels are actually 1".



In any event, the smaller wheels allowed the window track to **** a little when going up and down but apart from a small visual misalignment, there was no problem operationally. When the window got to the top or bottom it squared off per normal and as far as I'm concerned this is a non-issue. Knowing where this $13 packet of wheels came from I'm going to assume that manufacturing tolerance was not a priority. YMMV.



Again, thanks to Mntnceguy for blazing the trail here. With this and his door lock actuator motor fix some very common and relatively expensive issues are eliminated.