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2 years ago
Wiper motor swap-out
October 2, 2009: If you’ve had the chance to read my earlier post, ‘Setting off across a continent’, you’ll know that my wiper motor failed about two hours from home and I drove the next 11 hours in heavy rain.
A call to The Roadster Factory found Dan who arranged to ship a replacement, rebuilt motor to my motel in SLO. It arrived a day earlier than promised, so ‘Thanks, Dan’.
The motor came without gears, so it was a simple task of swapping gears from my unit to the new one.
The electrical connections are a little different and I can’t get ‘park’ to work. No matter to worry over just now. Most importantly, I have wipers for my return to Philadelphia.
I wanted to check if my wiper mechanism that connects the wipers to the motor was binding. I had previously lubed the two individual mechanisms behind the access plates and done what I could to lube the mechanism from the motor end.
Somewhere, I have read that the resistance in the mechanism when the cable is pulled should not exceed 7 lbs, aimed to avoid over-straining the motor. I was happy to note that my finger pull test (it should be done with something like a fisherman’s spring scale) seemed well below 7 lb. My old wiper motor really is shot, then. It will be soon on its way to TRF to reclaim my core charge.
I generously lubed the gear box inside the new unit and installed it. It seems strong when running.
My work above is trivial compared to some of the shade-tree heroics around the hotel. Severe overheating in a TR3 has been resolved after much investigation, involving swapping water pumps and more: a punctured (new) thermostat is now installed to offer some resistance and the car’s temperature is now steady and normal. I think the owner told me he’d tried three new thermostats and all were faulty.
Another I saw yesterday was installing a new Moss exhaust downpipe to his TR3 - the old had snapped off at the manifold joint. Moss had shipped a replacement to the hotel.
Another I heard of was waiting for an axle that was 40 lbs over the Fed-Ex weight limit and couldn’t get here until next week. I don’t know if he’s going to wait for it or ship the car home. If he waits, there are worse places on the planet to wait for a part.
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