Help! Wiper arm linkage - could never work as is, so it's wrong....

[davepl]

I spent a good chunk of this afternoon fighting with the wiper motor. Installed it without removing the freshly painted cowl, which was no fun, but did it. Motor ran until the linkage hit the internals of the cowl, popped a fuse, and stopped.

I pulled the cowl, r&r'd the wiper motor, but it still hits the inside of the cowl (just some bracing). There's no way the arms can go far enough such that the wiper arm pivots would rotate all the way around.

I'd pull it apart further, but it was the body shop that put the linkage in (so I wouldn't have to remove the cowl) and I'm suspecting they might have done something wrong. Can anyone spot a problem from the photo, or point me at some detailed drawing of how it's -supposed- to be set up?

Thanks!
Dave

[davepl]

Damn. Looking at my original reference photo it looks like the link arms may be on the wrong side. Not the one with the "rib" running down the middle of its end is swapped side to side from the picture earlier.

Should I swap them? I'm guessing so....

[davepl]

Kinda lonely on this thread, but in case someone in the future needs to know which way they go or diagnose why they "don't go", mine were reversed by the body shop, which is shown in the first photo.

The second photo is my reference photo during teardown (take many, folks... many more than you think you'll need). You can see the arms are reversed.

So, pulled the arms. Noting that one base was moving around earlier I found a couple of the holes stripped as well, so I wound up using a fractionally larger "lag" screw rather than the #10 machine thread screw. It won't be going anywhere, and it looks about the same.

I also took the opportunity to clean and grease everything; by hand it made things seem much looser (but in a good way). The wiper motor sounds a lot less loaded and smoother now too, so maybe having it force me to take it all apart wasn't a bad idea.

In the long run I've washer hoses and cowl AC vents and antenna so on, not to mention all the grommets, so the cowl was probably going to have to come back off anyway.

[Hawghauler]

I can sympathize, I just did this with a late model Savana van, these can be tricky no matter how easy they look.
Thanks for sharing your experience. I'm sure someone down the line will be scratching their head wondering what they did wrong and will find this thread.

[WIDESIDE72]

I had mine piled in a box along with door and window regulators and numerois other parts by the body shop. I feel your pain.

[vidman]

This is how mine looked on my cab and they worked fine

[davepl]

Originally Posted by vidman

This is how mine looked on my cab and they worked fine

Yep, 'cus that's the right way. They've backwards in my first photo. But thanks for the great "correct" way photo!

[swamp rat]

Great information, Thanks for posting.

[sboris]

Good info, just installed mine today. Probably saved a major head ache later. Lol. One of those things I didn't think would would install both ways.. Save this if your doing this in the future.

[vidman]

I snapped a lot of pictures simply because at my age I cant remember what i did last month let alone one year ago.. HA-HA

[yfs200p]

Subscribed, doing this in the next few days and i'm sure i wont be able to find the thread when i need it. Thanks fellas