Wiper blade reversal

[justesen]

I'm goint to try and reverse the wiper blades on the "77" this weekend. The Pelican tech article is great but it shows a non AC car. Are there any tricks I should know to do this on an AC car?

I've got the carpet out and the rear dash cover off and there's an awful lot of extra "stuff" that's not on a non AC car.

I had sent this message at about 8:30 EST but it never showed up on the board so I'm trying again.

Thanks,

Jay
77 911S

[thomasalva]

Jay,

I just did this on my 89 with AC, and I didn't run into anything too strange. If you don't have the 101 Projects book, it might be worth picking up for this project, but getting in there is really not that bad. Remove the hoses, unbolt the big blower motor, unplug the electrical connection, and with some gentle maneuvering you should be able to swing it back out of the way.

While you are in there, if your wipers don't park correctly or if the intermittent doesn't work, you might want to clean or replace the wiper motor relay. The relay is bolted to the passenger-side firewall beside another box. I couldn't see the actual bolt until I pulled a fat tape-wrapped wire bundle out of the way.

As a point of reference, if you were to pull your speedometer out of the dash, you could reach right in the hole and grab the arm bracket. I wonder in fact if you could do the wiper reversal working through the gauge holes, but I haven't tried it.

Be sure to not rotate the wiper motor when you pry the arm off the motor shaft. On my first try I must have turned it slightly, because when I tested the wipers I would get a swipe-swipe-swipe-bump-back-up-a-little and had to pull the arm back off to fix it.

The thing that both the book and the article seem to mostly gloss over is the fact that when everything is done, you still will need to fix your wiper arms to look right when they are parked. Removing the arms and swapping them with each other is no problem, and the straight arm is no problem after the swap, but the bent arm will be bent up into the passenger's line of sight, rather than bent down toward the car. I put the bent arm in a vice and carefully bent it back straight, and then continued bending until it mirrored the original bend.

Doing this vice and bending work will probably gnarl up the metal and paint on the arm. My arms needed a repaint anyway, so I sanded each to bare metal and repainted them with black lacquer spray paint. I've never had any luck with enamel paint hardening enough, but the lacquer worked perfectly.

Be sure to sand off all the old paint, because the top paint coat will show everything underneath. Lacquer paint dries fast, and it is easy to smooth out with 1500 or 2000-grit wet-sand paper. I spent more time fiddling with the bending-sanding-painting part of this project than all the other mechanical stuff (which I could do now in probably 45 minutes).

Shawn
89 Coupe

[GenX Porsche]

When I did this I removed my speedo and I believe it was actually easier to do this inside the cab. If you get really frustrated with attempting to get at it from inside the front trunk give this a try. Other than that I think Shawn pretty much covered everything.

[fintstone]

Jay
You posted it on the "parts for sale board."

[bell]

yes bending the wiper arm needs to be done delicately, it can get chewed up if not carefull.
i wrapped my vice in masking tape and bent it that way.....came out smooth.
the coating may chip/crack....maybe sand/repaint black when your done for a refresh

[justesen]

Shawn, GenX and Bell:

Thanks for the input. I dug into yesterday afternoon and finished this morning. Other than being a contortionist in trying to get the arm off the wiper motor, it went pretty smooth.

I took these pictures for anyone in the future looking at doing this on an AC equiped car.

This is the view of the full HVAC unit. The AC dispersal box is the white thing in the center of the the picture. It just slides into a whole that comes from the AC unit.



This is a picture of the dispersal box in front of the hole it plugs into.



Bell, I used your idea and wrapped my vice in vinyl electrical tape. Not a scratch or a chip!

Thanks again guys, I appreciate the help.

Jay