Just purchased 1970 Olds Cutlass and the top will not retract. You can here the motor in the up position, but nothing in the down. I tried a new switch and it started to retract but a quarter of the way it stopped and slowly closed. I did top the fluid off., it did not need much if any at all. One thing I did notice was the switch it self, the old one and new one got very hot and you could smell the wires getting hot. I unplugged the switch and thought I would ask before end up burning the car up. Thank you for you help.

 

Grounds ground grounds....did I say grounds.
Get the manuals for the car there's at least 3. PIM (product info manual) Service and Fisher body manuals. The vert top circuit will likely need to be traced.
But start with cleaning all the grounds.

The fact that the circuit breaker isnt tripping tells me its grounds. The next thing to check is to verify the motor isnt bad,

Jump 12VDC directly to the motor where the connector is by the motor. If it works OK then its the wiring.
You will need ground jumper too. In fact you could try that first. Give the motor a direct ground. A lawn mover battery could come handy.

The grounds in your car started to deteriorate in 1971. So they have had 54 years to further degrade. All the grounds in this car will need attention.

 

Thank you, I will try that this weekend.

 

The switches get full power/current and tend to overheat. Isn’t there someone on here that installs a relay into the circuit?

 

If you know how to wire an isolation relay it will reduce the full current to the switch allowing the relay to take the heat which shouldn't bother it if the contacts are rated properly. But it still won't fix the bad ground.
The motor will not get full voltage to operate correctly.