I carved out a few hours this weekend to look at the wiper motor assembly, and made a little progress. I was able to unmount the motor from the windshield, link the arm up with the motor housing, attach the clip, and rotate the motor enough to get it close to the mount points. That was where things got difficult. The torque on the motor is enough that I couldn’t rotate it on all three axis to get each of the three bolts to go in cleanly. No amount of cajoling, pushing or pulling would give me the leverage I needed to get it in properly. I figure what they did at the factory was put the motor and arm in as one assembly and then link the arm up to the passenger’s wiper arm. I tried disconnecting the linkage there, but couldn’t disconnect the two arms from each other for love or money. Out of time and patience, I bolted the motor up tightly at one point, put the cowl on, and left it until spring.
adam says:
good write-up. i will be attempting to change out my wiper motor on my ’72 this spring. not looking forward to that. found your site while searching for tips. do you think if you had someone helping you it would’ve been doable?
bill says:
Yep, I definitely think it would have been more doable with two people. It’s hard to hold and align the motor and linkage with only two hands. I’d also recommend waiting until you have warm weather to fool with the wiper arms. The retaining clip is very thin and sharp.