1957 Chevy Bel Air Power Windows - Roll 'Em Up & Lock 'Em Down! Part 2

With the front doors finished, it was time to move to the quarter windows. After removing the back seat arm rests, the first step was removing the window crank handle. Then the door panel is removed by unscrewing the sill plate on top of the panel. Two screws and out it comes.

Next, unscrew the access plate to remove the regulator. Before removing the old regulator, first roll the quarter window up all the way. The window has to be in the up position to remove the old regulator and install the electric unit.

Remove the four screws that hold the regulator in place, then unhook the regulator arm from the channel guide on the window assembly.

With that done, the old regulator will come right out with a little twisting. The new Electric Life unit installs in reverse order from the removal process. Before bolting it in place, hook the arm of the electric regulator into the channel guide on the quarter window.

With the regulator hooked to the window, bolt it in place using only the two bottom mounting holes for the old manual regulator.

Route the wiring for the electric regulator through this hole in the bulkhead. We wrapped a little electrical tape around the wires so they wouldn't be cut by the sharp edge of the bulkhead.

From there it's just a simple matter of hooking the wires from the regulator into the switch. The control wiring to the switch comes from the front of the car. You'll see in a later photo how to route the wiring so no one sees it. The new switch mounts in the factory cover panel, all you have to do is trim the factory window crank hole with a razor blade.

With the switch in place, we removed the rocker panel cover and pulled the carpet back so we could run the wires through the factory wiring channel in the body. This way it was stored with all the other wiring going to the back, and was hidden from view.

Here you can see where the Painless Wiring harness is already routed through the factory channel. We laid the wiring for the window right next to it, reinstalled the cover plate, then the carpet and the rocker plate. After that, we just had to connect the wiring from the rear unit into the main bundle of wires coming from the driver's door that connects all four windows together.

Back to the keyless entry system: This is the main relay/routing block for all the wires from the lock actuators. Using the supplied wiring diagram, we connected the correct wires to their mates, and our locks were ready for power.

From there it was a matter of wiring the actuators into the control box for the keyless entry system. Again, everything is color coded, so all you have to do is follow the enclosed wiring diagram and hooking everything up is a piece of cake.

While we only used the keyless entry part of the system, the Electric Life unit can also serve as a car alarm and panic system if you want. It also has a kit to mount a remote trunk release switch. Once everything was wired up, we tucked the box underneath the dash.

The last step was connecting the controller to power, easily done thanks to the Painless Wiring harness and its extra accessory wires. If your car still has a factory harness, you'll need to hook the controller into a constant hot power supply so the locks work all the time, even with the key off.

With the keyless entry system all set, we tackled the last task with the power windows, hooking all the windows together, then to power. Following the wiring diagram, we used blade connectors to hook all the wires together. The benefit of using blade connectors and not permanently crimping them all is if we had to change anything in case we had a wire backwards, this made things a lot easier. It also gives you the option of changing which button on the driver's side control switch activates which window, so you can sequence the buttons however you'd like.

After figuring out which order we wanted and hooking up to power, we reconnected the car's battery and checked to make sure everything was working properly. After no issues with the windows, we wrapped each blade terminal with some electrical tape and tucked the wires away with the rest of the wiring harness.

Here we checked to make sure the keyless entry was working properly. One nice feature of the Electric Life kit (and something to be aware of) is that if you manually push down on one of the locks, it'll also trigger the other lock, so both function as a pair (or a quad if you've got a four door). The other great thing is the factory key actuators still work, so if your battery goes dead, you can still unlock the car manually.

With everything hooked up and working properly, we buttoned up the doors and put the back seat area back together. Aside from the late model switch, the panel still looks all-original.

Here's a shot of the quarter window area. While we had the arm rests out, we also installed some new ashtrays to replace the decades old ones that had all sorts of funky green stuff and rust on them. With everything back together our '57 was ready for the road.