Working Man's Burbon

[HO455]

First off. Thanks for the help Leon.

Now on to the task at hand. The wiper motor currently in the WMB been giving signs it's on its last leg. Basically it's slower and louder than ever. So I picked up some used ones hoping to find a good one. After testing I found I had a nice running unit but, the problem was that it had a badly rusted shaft. (Photo #1) There's no way any seal installed on the shaft on the left would ever keep water away from the bearing.

So pulled it apart as well as one unit I had that didn't run. That one had a good shaft but a broken brush on the armature. Perfect candidate to donate a good shaft.

Disassembly involved drilling out the factory rivets on the gear box. Once apart it I noticed a marked difference in grease application when they were assembled. (Photo #2) After some cleaning and reapplying grease it was almost ready to reassemble. Prior to assembly the park contacts needed attention so I used a ignition point file to clean and dress the park contacts. (Arrow points to the park contacts in photo #3.) Unfortunately the photo of the cleaned contacts didn't come out.

To reassemble the gear box I used pop rivets. On the rivet that holds the ground strap I scraped all the old paint away before installing. In addition I put a backing washer on the rivet (Photo #4 see arrow) as well as coating the rivet and ground strap with copper seize to ensure long-term conductivity.

I found the pop rivet backing washers at a yard sale a couple years back. I never knew they were an actual thing even though I had used washers on pop rivets before.

Anyway the unit has tested good and a new seal ordered, and then for me to pull the current wiper motor.