Got the Suburban all cleaned up last weekend and repaired a couple of bad spots in the roof's paint. Hopped in it yesterday, all of a sudden the driver's front window no worky no more.
Started last night with diagnosing the issue, then began to replace the window motor. Let me tell you....what a pain! After removing the door panel, there's another steel panel underneath. That gets unbolted to access the inner door components, but you can't take it all the way off because among all of the other nick-nacks that are attached to it, the window regulator is riveted to it and one of the regulator rollers rides in a track that's also riveted to it. The four big rivets holding the regulator on the removable panel have to be drilled out just to be able to remove the panel, or at least that's the only way I could see it happening; I'm sure there's a cute trick to it that someone will show me now that it's done.
So I drilled them all out, got it all apart then discovered the motor is also riveted onto the regulator. Most auto parts places only sell the whole assembly (regulator & motor), but luckily O'Reilly's sells just the motor so that saved me over half the cost of a new one. Working by myself made it pretty hard to get it all back together with all the pieces flopping around, but I was able to get it all replaced and working with minimal swearing; I just used bolts to hold it all together.
I also took the opportunity to replace the crappy OEM speakers with a nice pair of Alpines I had kicking around. Much better.
So I have learned a valuable lesson this week; just stop washing the truck, because every time I do, it always seems to reward me with some type of part failure soon afterward!