Project Fargolet

[Father&son56project]

Edgeleycanuck: Those suggestions were not helpless! As for the suv/mini van wipers I believe they are not a great fit for my header panel, and they tend to have a big sweep (like 120 degrees). I did end up looking at both tractor and marine wipers (with success-see below!).

6DoF: That’s an option that I was reserving for later, in case I couldn’t find a matching pair with 90 degree sweeps. My previous efforts to take apart electric motors have generally resulted in an explosion of tiny springs and magnets and stuff, so I was leery of opening a new motor up!

Here’s what I finally did in order to get a pair of good, strong, reliable wipers. This truck will not see rain often, but my area is very hilly so I really wanted to go electric. After an absolute ton of internet searches and unanswered emails from tech support at a couple of suppliers, I ordered a wiper designed for a tractor. I knew it was going to be bigger than I wanted, but I am happy with what I got. I bought a Case-IH VLC3005 motor that has a toggle switch built in. It does protrude into the cab from the header panel, but that’s where the toggle switch is, and in an old truck with utilitarian features, the protrusion really isn’t out of place. This motor is the same as all the other universals, as it has 2 shafts that go through the roof skin above the windshield. There is a round, solid inner shaft that the wiper arm attaches to, and a threaded outer shaft that is used to secure the wiper to the roof skin. If the shafts are too long, you simply cut off whatever is not needed. Here’s the new motor, with the excess shaft lengths already cut off:











These little universal motors mount by tightening 2 nuts that firmly clamp the threaded shaft to the roof skin (one nut inside the roof skin, one nut outside the roof skin). They also have a small tab that needs to get affixed to the body in order to keep the motor from rotating due to the twisting force of the wiper. Due to an inner sheet metal lip where 2 roof panels met inside, I needed to create a spacer that would set the motor about 2 inches inside of the roof skin. I was scratching my head over how to create a metal bracket to do this, when it occurred to me that I am not limited to metal. These trucks used a fair amount of wood in their construction (even the cab used to sit on wooden blocks), so I grabbed a piece of wood, took a few measurements, made a quick guess or two, and then used a chop saw to make “spacer version 1.0”. It’s murder getting inside that header panel to take accurate measurements, so version 1.0 was meant to just be a test piece. Imagine my surprise when I installed it and it fit perfectly! Using a spacer block was also very useful, as it allowed me to tighten the motor in place using only one nut from the outside of the roofskin (there is no access whatsoever to be able to get a wrench onto a nut on the inner skin, which is how these are meant to be attached). Here is the new motor, with spacer 1.0 in place:











Next came the outer fitting. The wiper shaft protrudes through the roof skin at about a 70 degree angle, so I needed a 70 degree fitting to clamp the wiper in place. This was just a matter of grabbing a piece of solid round bar, drilling a hole down the centre of its axis, and then cutting off a piece at the correct length and angles (90 degree at one end, 70 degree at the other).











I then cut up a couple of seals to keep water out and bolted the whole mess together. Here’s the outside now:









Next came the anti-rotation tab. For this I just fabbed a little tab that attaches to the windshield hinge bracket on the driver side.









For the passenger side it got a little trickier as the anti-rotation tab is not on the same side as the windshield hinge bracket. I made this little attachment tab which will be temporarily bolted into place against the header panel. Once I know that everything is good, I will remove the bolts and weld it in place permanently.








The wooden spacer for the passenger side was identical, so making a 2nd one was 5 minutes work. Here’s the driver side with the motor in place. I still need to fab up a panel that covers the access hole and trims up the motor to make it look more like it’s supposed to be that way (remember it protrudes into the cab a bit).









Next came the wiper arms and blades. Aside from using stock ones, there appear to be 2 common styles of universal aftermarket alternatives. There are the arm & blade combos that seem to come with all the aftermarket universal wiper motor kits (the lower combination in the photo below), or I could use the Anco 41-01 arm and the Trico Classic blade (upper combo in this pic):








For those who are interested, I’ll share some comments about these 2 wiper combo choices.

Anco/Trico combo:

-$43 Cdn at Rockauto for one arm/blade set
-Arm length is adjustable
-Blade angle is adjustable
-Construction is very strong (thick metal, well made)
-Spring inside arm is very strong (likely too strong for vacuum wipers, but can be adjusted with some tinkering as I did on page 4 of this build thread)
-Arm comes with adapters to fit most common wiper posts
-Dull metallic silver finish on arm, chrome on blade frame

Universal kit combo:

-$20 Cdn per set at various online vendors in the US
-Arm length is adjustable (but the construction makes it a bit tough to do at points)
-Construction is horrible (poorly stamped, thin metal, flimsy and overall awful)
-Spring is moderately strong
-Blade can be shortened by cutting it (useful for minor interference with windshield frame)
-Blade angle not adjustable
-Arm comes with adapters for 2 different post types
-Chrome finish on both arm and blade

I went with the Anco/Trico combo, but both would work on the Fargo. Here is a pic of the driver side. It just needs some adjustment to optimize the swept area, and I need to lower the blade a bit by adjusting the arm length (super simple to do).









I hope I wasn’t too long winded about installing wipers, but I have to say that getting these things sorted out was actually one of the trickies jobs I’ve had on this swap!