I've been fighting the clamshell window off and on for a while. Sometimes it went all the way up and down (with a good amount of grinding), sometimes it went only part way up and/or down, and sometimes the motor spun (no grinding) but nothing happened. As I prepared to remove the actuator gear (interior side of the tailgate key switch) I happened to look down and saw the drive motor was held by only two out of three mounting bolts. This allowed the motor to shift slightly when activated, probably (maybe) causing it to disengage from the drive cable to the actuator gear. I installed the 3rd bolt, tightened the others, and the window, now, works normally. I'll still lube track, gears and cable.
It's grand when a problem's an easy fix. Any symptom just takes you to dig in, see what's going on, no matter what the problem is.
Until the motor spun without anything happening I thought the window was binding up in the track, or something else kept it from hitting the stops all the time.
