September 2004
| OK, I'm a bit late with the update, but I have a good excuse.....I've been hot rodding around and having some R&R. That's both rest and relaxation and rocking and rolling. In fact, most of this update actually occurred in October so I am cheating a bit. That said, here is the latest. |
| I firstly mounted the wiper motor and worked out the sweep area. The first obstacle was where the wiper would be at rest. With the arm straight, it is not possible to get it down any further. A compromise had to be sought. |
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| I mocked up an old arm and started working out the best size and sweep area. Once that was found, I then marked on the arms I intend to use the required length. These are mini items as well. You will note I bent the arm at an angle so it will tuck in when at rest. |
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| I cut the wiper blade carrier and roughed up the surfaces for gluing so I could retain the clips to hold the blades. As you can see, I used Aradite to glue the cut off pieces by overlapping them onto the carrier. This will certainly be strong enough. |
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| The next action was to work out exactly where the drive pin needs to be. After drilling out the original pin, I removed the gear and con rod and positioned the wiper on the marks I made when I had the panel in the car. After I was sure where the optimum position was at rest and full sweep, I marked the position on the drive wheel. This could have been done with the con rod in place. It was just easier for me to work out the optimum position with the drive shaft only. After drilling and welding the pin in the new location, I re assembled the drive gear and greased it back up. I also removed the sensors for the self parking, as I don't intend to use it. |
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| Here it is re installed in the car. This is the actual wipe area and the wipers at the normal park position. The driver's wiper is the mock up one. I will modify the mini one later. This should be fairly functional and neat and duplicates the original wiper action as the wiper oppose each other rather than in parallel. |
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| As mentioned last month, here is a comparison of the early mini wiper shaft/gear and the latter version. The early one is on the right. You would have to be lucky to find the gearing to be perfect for your application. You would probably still need to move the drive pin to get it exactly right....but, you would never know unless you tried. I didn't bother cause the threads were buggard on the ones I had. On a side note, if I would have pre empted this a bit more, I would have moved the wipers apart another inch or two. This would have made it possible to achieve a more efficient wipe area. I was not obliged to use the original mounting holes as I did relocate the wipe from the top of the windscreen to the bottom to start with. Oh well, at least its symmetrical I guess. |
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