wipers are slipping....

[tcsracing1]

I have an almost completed car.

I installed the wiper kit but they are slipping on the motors.... it is like the teeth are not enough grip....
Appears to be very mickey mouse...

any suggestions?

[Walt]

You can tighten the gear boxes with a pair of large channel locks, thats where they can slip.

[edwardb]

Yes they can be finicky. The common place they slip is the engagement between the cable and the gear in the wheel boxes. As Walt said, adjust the wheel boxes. With a large pair of pliers, channel locks, hammer (!!), whatever seems appropriate, adjust the loops on each side of the wheel boxes so the cable can't slip away from the gear. But not so tight to cause undo drag. When you're all done, make sure the cables, tubes, and gears are packed with grease. White lithium is often used. You probably don't want to hear this, but many (myself included) after a lot of unsuccessful messing around have solved the problem with wheel boxes from **********. They're higher quality and actually make the wipers work pretty well. They'll never be really great just because the blade is so short and the sweep isn't real wide. Exactly like the 60's vintage Lucas wipers they're replicating.

[John4337]

Just as a reminder, don’t try to run them on a dry windscreen. Put paper towels under them, or wet the windscreen. Like EdwardB says, they can be made to work well. I did swap wheel boxes to get a larger swept area.


Persistence will pay off

John

[AC Bill]

Been an ongoing problem with this vintage type wiper system for 10+ years.

Back when I built mine, the first mod you did to the supplied wheel-boxes, was to get rid of the rivet type screws that pinch the cable retaining tabs to the box. Drill out and replace them with machine screws and nuts. There are multiple threads on fine tuning these darn things on the FFCars.Com forum.
Here is a simple set of instructions from ERA, that gives you a few hints, on what might be needed.
http://www.erareplicas.com/427man/wiper/index.htm