Wiper Drag

[Squidog]

Ok...Wipers on, but the drag on the windsheild seems excessive. I tightened up the gearboxes so I now have no more slippage, but the wipers sutll hang up. Seems like excess down force on window. If I put windex on I can get a couple of rotations but not alot before the motor stops. Seems to be a lot of friction. Any thoughts or ideas to improve? Looking to get through inspection this week and need the wipers moving. Do you think a coating of rain-x on the windsheild would solve the problem?

Thanks in advance.

Squid

[edwardb]

Something doesn't sound right. I've never seen the wipers themselves cause the kind of drag you're describing. Especially to the point of stopping the motor. They just don't push down that hard in my experience. Even on a dry windshield which I don't recommend anyway. How do they run without the wiper arms? I'm wondering if you have some king of excessive drag in the mechanism itself. Hopefully not.

BTW, when I'm testing them dry, I usually a put a paper towel under each wiper. That lasts indefinitely for testing and has low drag.

[John4337]

Mine work fine, but the general consensus is to never run them dry. Wet the windscreen or use the paper towel trick

John

[Jeff Kleiner]

I'm another who always puts a paper towel between the blades and glass when running them dry. Did you lube the wheelboxes and cable liberally? I Lots of white grease is your friend when dealing with this fine example of British monkey motion engineering ;)

Jeff

[cwrandolph]

As mentioned above, I would try running without the blades to find out if the binding is coming from the gearboxes or the cable. Any tight bends or kinks in the tubing? Did you over tighten the gearboxes? Good luck!

[RR20AC]

When making up the flair ends of the tubes for the assembly I noticed that the tubes themselves would crimp slightly smaller just forward of the flair. I reamed mine out and fixed the bind.

[Crawleyscobra]

After doing all the different things listed in the forums to address all the various wiper issues, I noticed I had this exact issue too. What I did was replaced the springs in the wipers that press them onto the windshield. The springs were very strong, so I just found some at Lowes that were softer. Now they work like a charm.