restoration of vent window actuator assembly

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If you have a vent window assembly that is tough to crank or, even worse, no longer works, chances are this rebuild process will get you ventilated once again.  You’ll need a 1/2” drill, a drill and tap set, and preferably a drill press.
To begin with, understand the orientation of the internal parts.  There is a simple worm gear assembly; one gear is formed by a  groove wrapped around a shaft (the worm), and the other a simple spur gear.  The shaft to which the window handle attaches has the worm gear and the shaft that attaches to the vent window has the spur gear show in picture #2.  You can see the teeth on this spur gear are deformed a bit from overbearing on the handle, presumably when the assembly starts to age and the window becomes more difficult to close or open.  An interesting discovery was that the passenger side assembly was in worse shape than the driver’s side! 
There’s a formed sheet metal cover plate that holds the end of the worm gear shaft in proper alignment with the spur gear.  There are two deformed pot metal posts holding this plate in place.  Use the 1/2” drill to “mill” the posts down to the level of the cover plate.  The drill centers itself easily in the middle of the post.  It is important to only drill the post down to the cover plate so you can pop the cover plate off but leave enough of the post to locate the cover plate in proper orientation when you put the assembly back together.   
The spur gear is held in place by another cover plate that is held within a recess of the housing by a deformed ridge of pot metal.  The screw driver is pointing to this ridge.  On mine, and probably everybody else’s, there were only about 4 points around this rim that the pot metal was deformed, which is important because the remaining untouched parts of the rim will be used to put things back together. 
With the housing held gently in a vice, take a medium sized screw driver and pry the deformed sections of pot metal away so that the cover plate can be lifted out.  Now you are ready to take things apart.  Make sure you keep track of the washers and spacers in there on both shafts. 
Notes: You will probably not see much grease inside!  Unfortunately, the housing was not designed to retain any grease, or keep dirt and grime out of the gears.  No seals or any means to keep things clean over the years.  It is also helpful to use a window crank placed on its shaft to back the worm gear out of the housing.   
Now for the machining.  The posts that you ground need to be drilled and tapped for the screws that will hold the worm gear cover plate in place.  A good tip to point out is that the point of the 1/2” drill used to remove the deformed portion of each post leaves a recess that serves well to center the tap drill.  See the picture with the worm gear partially removed from the housing - you will see how the posts appear after the cover plate was removed_Once drilled, preferably using a drill press to make sure the hole is drilled properly, I used size 10-32 screws with a wide head that provides enough surface area to hold the cover plate securely. 
Clean everything up and grease it. I used white lithium grease.  We’ll see how that lasts.  the nice thing is that the assembly can be cleaned up and regreased in the future!
Check out how the gears operate before deforming housing ridge around the spur gear cover plate. 
One final note: if you are lucky, your assembly was used on more than one model, making replacements easy to find.  The assembly is unique for 48-49 convertibles, so I had to be careful through the whole process, to make sure I didn’t scrap an expensive actuator! 
Feel free to contact me if you have any questions.
Dan Barbieri
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By the way, I was not the person who developed this repair process.  When the name comes to me of the person that described it to me, I will post it so that full credit is given. 

Dan Barbieri