AW11 wiper rod upgrade

Brutes,

Some of you, like me, may have found yourself on the recieving end of dodgy window wipers. In my case, its been an excessively worn balljoint at the motor connection which repeatedly pops off during initial load, causing me to lose complete wipers when i need them the most. The typical solution to this is second hand wiper rods from eBay with no guarantees they wont be just as humped (as i have...). Otherwise its a £150 bill from Mr T for the full unit, as the plastic balljoint cups cannot be bought individually.

Well, not any more.

I have constructed this solution for approximately £50, and its fairly bombproof. By fairly, i mean you will still be wiping away atomic ash after the nuclear holocaust has hit. Heres what you need:

4x M6 female RH threaded rosejoints, they look like this:

http://www.twobrutal.co.uk/forum/ima...012/01/383.jpg

and cost about £4 a pop from eBay. Next you need a couple of metres of M6 threaded rod. Again, ebay yields this for about a fiver in total. Then, pop to a local ironmongers and get a couple metres of 10mm tubing, in steel. Mine has a wall diameter of 2mm. Usually a few quid for this. In essence, the steel tubing I/D needs to be the same as the threaded rod O/D

You will need a selection of 6mm bolts, a drill, angle grinder, hammer and a blowtorch.

Here's how you do it. First remove the wiper motor. Now take my advice and leave the wipers on FULL EXTENSION (ie, facing vertical) as this allows the motor easier extraction. Undo the 3 retaining 19mm bolts and jiggle free. Don't worry about taking care with the rod connection, we are replacing it.

Next, remove the wiper arms from the spindles (WD40 is your friend) then remove the 3 10mm retaining bolts that hold each spindle assembly on then remove the spindles from the car chassis. Take your spindles and motor to the bench....

Next up, chop the 10mm dia tube down to 445mm, and the threaded rod to 480mm. Run the threaded rod into the tube, and screw a M6 rose joint onto each end:

http://www.twobrutal.co.uk/forum/ima...012/01/384.jpg
(measurement taken from rosejoint base to rosejoint base.)

Torque them together. You should now have something that looks like this:

http://www.twobrutal.co.uk/forum/ima...012/01/385.jpg

Once tight, both rose-joints should face the same direction, as above. For the next step though, slacken both joints off a couple of turns.

Now, clamp into a vice with this much protrusion:

http://www.twobrutal.co.uk/forum/ima...012/01/386.jpg
(you need the 320mm end above, right hand side, to work with.)

...and apply some heat:

http://www.twobrutal.co.uk/forum/ima...012/01/387.jpg

Once glowing, hammer or slip a tube over and GRADUALLY pull the bar by approx 10 degrees to bend it. It should now start looking like the removed rod:

http://www.twobrutal.co.uk/forum/ima...012/01/388.jpg

Sexy eh? Now, pimp it up with some paint. I went with primer and then grey, but frankly any colour will work with negligible effect on performance. Goes without saying chaps but don't paint the rose assembly.

http://www.twobrutal.co.uk/forum/ima...012/01/389.jpg

Next take the middle spindle (as opposed to the edge or "driver side" spindle) as below:

http://www.twobrutal.co.uk/forum/ima...012/01/390.jpg

...and grindy grindy off the ball:

http://www.twobrutal.co.uk/forum/ima...012/01/391.jpg

...then drill it out. It helps to vice mount and power drill it for accuracy:

http://www.twobrutal.co.uk/forum/ima...012/01/392.jpg
(6mm hole here chaps)

Now you want to bolt the new rod to the old spindle as below. The tapered washer brass looking thing is a special "misalignment spacer". Cost pennies and to be honest aren't reeeeally needed as a nut will do to isolate the balljoint from the base of the spindle. I just like being a baller y0:

http://www.twobrutal.co.uk/forum/ima...012/01/393.jpg
(double nutting the base stops it all loosening off, you wanna be doing that)

http://www.twobrutal.co.uk/forum/ima...012/01/394.jpg
(misalignment spacer as fitted)

Now you want to repeat the process on the motors arm:
http://www.twobrutal.co.uk/forum/ima...012/01/395.jpg
(pardon the shivering cold effects on the picture. It was cold. Shiveringly so)

...and drill it out like so:
http://www.twobrutal.co.uk/forum/ima...012/01/396.jpg

Now the way i have pictured it above is infact NOT the way it will assemble in the car. Essentially you now want to reassemble your spindles and new rod in place, and reattach the rod to the motor as per reversed removal. If you assemble with the bolt facing the way it does above, it will foul on bulkhead junk where the rods run; so you need to run the bolt through the rod first, with the threaded end facing into the wiper motor. Lock it onto place with an M6 nut. Then attach the motor arm and double nut it in place. Its easily the fiddliest part of the project due to space restrictions at the motors mount area, but can be done. Once tightened up, reattach the wiper arms and test. if you did it like me it should go first time. :D

Now i am still testing this out, and time trials are about the only way to be sure its effective, but i have used the car for 24 hours now in some fairly crappy cold wet conditions, and the M6 setup has worked well. In theory, you could up all sizes by 2mm (M8 rosejoints, 12mm tube etc) but i was worried about clearances and space under there.

I also ran out of time to complete the drivers side rod, but i will be doing this in time and will add the exact procedure to this first post.

Let me know what you think gents!:thumbsup:

That is truly awesome work there!

:)

C.

Where were you when I need new wiper arms! Great work.

I think the wipers and the headlights are the key weakneses of my AW right now. Besides the rust :icon_lol:

EDIT: Chris, I'd not realised how close you are to me. We'll need to meet for a pint so you can get a ride in MiFu :)

Bloody brilliant, deserves to be stickied. :praise2:

Cheers gents. Diesel, where are you at??

That is great work ! Looks much stronger than the originals. Well done :icon_biggrin:

Good stuff!

I'll try and remember this one for if (when?) mine pack up!

always a problem, good solution

Ooh, stickied! I'm honoured, first time for me!

Been called off to Baku but will have the other side written up as soon as I'm back.

How-to updated to fix dead image links.