Worn wiper turret fix

[LandCruiser1978]

Spent new year with my parents but that involved driving 250miles
Now the for the whole journey it was raining hard so had the wipers on pretty much flat out all the way.

When i got about 50 miles from my parents house i noticed a vibration through the steering wheel and an awful noise when the wipers where at the bottom of the screen ..
I had no option but to continue and thought i'll have a look tommorow .


Well tommorow was new years day so went out and had a good look .
Noticed the passenger wiper arm was rubbing on the scuttle panel .
so took wiper arms off and felt the spline / sticky out of scuttle bit .

lots of play

so set about stripping it all down to see if there is any adjustment or if i could repair etc .
Only snapped one bolt out of the 6 holding the turrets in place
Got it all out and on my dads kitchen work top .

Now the splined bit had worn through the turret at a weird angle .
So spent 20mins pondering over how to fix/repair all the worn alloy from the turret
What can i do????

And in my arm rest of the 80 i had the answer
CHEMICAL METAL
i pushed the splined bit straight in the turret so it sat where it should
mixed it up and started pushing the chemical metal into the worn area of the turret . I had to use a little flat blade screw driver to push/force the stuff all the way into the turret
Basically i've replaced the worn out alloy casing with chemical metal
i was spinning the splined part around in the turret while it was setting and squirting copper slip grease in to the gap .

Made sure that there was plenty of copper slip in the gap between splined spiney wiper bit and the turret

Drilled out the snapped bolt from the turret tapped it out and put it all back together

Tested it and it was quieter than it ever had been .
It rained all the way home and had no issues
Now since new year i've done a fair few miles in her and alot of rainy days and there is no play in the turret part .
I'm made up
Looks like i may have saved myself alot of money

 

[adrianr]

Good job!

 

[Chris]

One of those rare but very common 80 issues. Poor design really all there is, is a plastic slip tube in there. Once that wears out, you are into the alloy.

Good fix, hadn't thought of that one. I have some spares I plan to play with when I get some time

Chris

 

[LandCruiser1978]

I think it's a really good fix and should last a long time
As long as you can recreate the original shape of the inside of the turret by forcing chemical metal into the turret it's worked really well .

Like i said i used a flat blade scredriver to push the stuff into the turret while spining the linkage so it doesn't all just stick together and then a few squirts of lube

 

[Chris]

Could you have wrapped the spindle in greased cling-film to stop it sticking?

Chris

 

[LandCruiser1978]

no chance . simply no room the spindle has some kind of washer fitted at the base before it goes into the turret ..
If you could split the whole thing into pieces you could fill the lot with chemical metal then just run a drill bit through . would never wear then