Hello everyone,

If you've had your 1st gen MINI for any length of time, you may have suffered with crooked side windows. The symptoms and range from creaking where the glass rubs against the door pillar, to excessive wind noise, to not allowing the door to close properly. To remedy this problem BMW says you need a special tool—DON'T BUY IT!

Friends, I have a fix.

I'm going to tell you how to save $100 and several hours of your time by not going to the dealer to have your maladjusted windows straightened out.

This procedure is your best option is because of the following reasons:

A. You WILL NOT have to disassemble your door.

B. It will take you UNDER 3 minutes per door to perform

C. You DONT have to buy any special tools from the dealer.

You WILL, however, need to acquire a special tool, available from most any local bike shop. The following instructions may look like a lot, but I swear it took me exactly 1 minute to fix my door.

Ready? OK!

1. Drive on down to your local bike (bicycle) store. Walk back to the repair counter (the mechanics will understand what you're about to say.)
Ask them if you can borrow or buy a "lock ring wrench". If they ask you what kind of bike you have, tell them if they let you borrow a wrench for 5 minutes, you'll show them. You'll probably get the wrench, but if you have to buy one they're only about $25. The brand I used is by Hozan.

2. Walk out to your car, open the offending door, lower the window, pull off the trim starting at the rear, (don't worry you won't break any clips or anything) This is easiest to do if you open the door and stand on the inside of it.

3. Raise the window. Now, look down the gap between the glass and the outer skin of the door. You'll see the two white plastic washers that hold the glass in the door. They are about 1.5" in diameter, and have teeth all the way around them. As a matter of fact they look like a gear.

4. stand on the outside of the door and slide the lock ring spanner down the aforementioned gap and then hook the tooth of the wrench onto one of the teeth on the right side of one of the plastic gear washer. Do the one toward the rear of the door first and turn it 10 -15 degrees counter clockwise. Now do the one toward the front of the door, this time turning the wrench only 10 degrees.

5. Now you can adjust the glass any way you wish, however you may only need to rotate the glass. Leaving the front washer slightly tighter allows you to rotate the glass using the front washer as the pivot point.

6. Now that you have aligned the glass to your liking, flip the wrench so it engages the teeth on the left side of the sprocket (you are still standing to the outside of the door) and proceed to tighten till it's nice and snug.

7. Roll the window part way down. Close the door, and roll up the window. make sure the window dip function is working correctly by opening and closing the door.

8. That's it. Return the wrench, tip your bike mechanic and motor off into the sunset.

You just saved a hundred bucks! Ka-ching!

 

Awesome!

 

This is awesome, thanks!

BTW, the tool needed isn't used on newer bikes so some shops don't have them, they can order the tool though.
Before I loosened the big nuts I put some tape on the inside of the window so the tape was just touching the inside seal. This gave me a reference for how far to move the window up.


door window height adjustment <-for future searches, it took me a while to find this thread.

 

Anyone know if this works on rear windows on the convertibles?

 

The rear window on the convertible is even more simpele to adjust als my local dealer pointed pointed out to me, (On a 2011 R57 mini) if you open the door you will find a rubber cover next to the rear window, you can pull this open and inside the rear panel you will find a 10mm nut. If you loosen this nut a bit (don't unscrew it complete) you will be able to adjust the window and rubber " B pillar" sideways to ensure a thigh fit between the front and back window and thus eliminate wind noise. Additional tip, while retracting my 10mm socket it fell into the rear panel.... Make shure this doesn't happen to you. (Got it after a lot of fiddling) Hope this helps

 

I just rounded off to a nub a very sturdy hex key which I got leverage with a long socket. Instead of using that bike tool there's a hex hole in the middle of that gear. That thing would not budge. I followed OPs directions otherwise. Window doesn't dip or go up nearly as much as other side and in getting water since it won't completely close (by a finger nail).

And 3 minutes my ***. I'm somewhat mechanically inclined and this took me 20 to get the door apart and start poking.

EDIT: Buy the correct BMW window adjustment tool. I took the OPs advice and bought the bike tool and it slips and cant get a grip. I bought the tool for $20 and it worked effortlessly. And once again, 3 min my ***.