cruiser
Well-Known Member
Greetings Mopar brethren. The poll results are in, and you've spoken. You've chosen another chapter of component resto over hearing my life story, although either will put you to sleep equally quickly IMHO. So by popular demand we present tonight's bedtime reading, the wiper system resto on my 1974 Gold Duster. My car came from the factory with the optional code J25 three speed windshield wipers with the electric windshield washer pump. When I bought my car in the spring of 2019, the wiper system was a mess. Yeah, it worked but it was still a mess. Both wiper blades were awful parts store aftermarket blades attached to the arms with wire ties (see first photo). Seriously? Step one was to remove the arms, which took a lot of coaxing as the arms were rusted onto the wiper pivots. Soaking them with a rust release aerosol helped a lot, and once I got them off I determined that these were not the original arms, but were in fact undersized 15" arms. In 1974, A body wipers were equipped with the improved "hold open" 16" arms which allowed the arms to be held away from the glass for easier cleaning of the windshield. You've probably seen them before - they have the small tab at the base of the arm that is pulled up when you retract the arm away from the windshield to make cleaning it easier. This feature also allowed much easier removal of the arm as you no longer needed the special arm removal tool. So it was off the see Maynard at my favorite junkyard in Willmar, MN to find the correct arms for my ride. Fortunately, Maynard had a plentiful supply of A bodies to search from, and I soon had a pair of really nice 16" Trico hold-open arms with the correct ANCO 16" stainless steel blades . All this for $10.00 and a pint of A positive blood donated to the local mosquito population. Next, I removed the wiper pivots and the linkage assembly under the dash. The date coded (2623) original wiper motor itself was fine, and I just cleaned it up a bit without removing it from the firewall. The wiper linkage has a number of pivot bushings which eventually crumble and fail, but you can still buy new nylon bushings at NAPA. I installed the new bushings, then cleaned the arms and lubed everything with white lithium grease. The pivots were cleaned then refurbished with a rebuild kit that consisted of new cowl gaskets and the foam rubber pivot hole donut (see photo). I believe that the foam rubber donuts were original to the car as they had overspray on them from the car's 1994 repaint job. The linkage and pivot assemblies were then reinstalled and connected to the motor drive arm. The arms cleaned up nicely, but the challenge now was to find the original style rubber blade refills. Since I wanted my wipers to be correct, my research determined that I would need the "notched" refills that came with stainless steel spines. The notches fits against the claws on the blade assembly to lock them into place. These locking notches are visible if you zoom in on the photos below. If you can find them on e-Bay, the correct 16" refills are ANCO part number 690. So in went the ANCO refills and next came the washer system. I replaced all the hoses with the correct ribbed repro hose, and replaced the broken tee screwed to the firewall. The reservoir and motor just needed a good cleanup, and they went back in with the two factory original screws that I de-rusted with Evapo-Rust. It all went back together nicely, and works just fine. The final two photos below show the correctly installed and adjusted wipers back the way they should be. It's nowhere near as nice as the wiper systems in modern cars, but does the job well for my purposes. And so as we conclude tonight's chapter, I'm hoping that you're ready for your warm bed waiting for you upstairs. Keep those cards and letters coming, and I'll try not to run out of topics. Have a merry and blessed Christmas!
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