Talk Morgan Forums Morgan Sports Cars Maintenance & Servicing Wiper blade replacements

There may be too much spring tension in the arms?

Exactly what I think Dave. I was told that the unaltered original works better on curved screens than on flat screens. Mine, with the shortened arms, probably does not have enough leverage to fully straighten the rubber blade. I am thinking of possible solutions. A functional design really does not seem difficult but making it without specific tooling is something else altogether.

Try the Holden ten inchers cut down.They do look good and work well.

I see one of the problems as the length of the wiper arm is too short. The standard blade is already mounted so that it is shorter on the arm side than the outer section. Even so the rubber comes over the bottom part of the windscreen frame when the blade is vertical.

I have noticed that Car Builder Solutions have these adjustable length arms in both left and right park. Has anyone tried them?

Peter -- I have them on my Mog. They are useful in that you can experiment with getting the blade sweep exactly where you want, but not so great in that it is very difficult to get them to "Lock" effectively -- i.e. they seem to slip longer over time. Overall I'm not convinced that they are worth it!!

Cheers!

Robbie,

Once adjusted would it be possible to finally lock them by drilling through and using a small SS self tapping screw?

Peter

Peter - possibly although the material of the spring which locks the arm length is really tough so would require a really sharp hard bit.. I'm not sure I'd like the look of it either. Worth a try if you have such an arm spare to experiment!!!

Cheers!

I use headlight sprung wiper blades as used on such as Volvos and SAABs, these come in a range of lengths from 5" to at least 9". OK need to swap the pivot as described before, but then can use std 'off the shelf' short sprung wiper blades, no need to cut down.
eg http://www.wiperblades4u.co.uk/headlight-wiper-blades many suppliers on eBay etc. Just a thought - PJB

I have these adjustable length arms on my Morgan, I thought they were standard. I've not experienced any issues with them changing length. You could probably do an invisible fix if they did move by poking a lump of Sugru up inside the wiper arm to hold everything in place once they had been set to the correct length.

I have been looking at this a bit. The standard wiper blade is 175 mm long but the centre pivot is not at the centre, it is 80 mm from the end closest to the drive spindle (7.5 mm off centre). Seems strange but I have seen that some other car blades are not symmetrical but this is a lot for such a short blade. The little metal parts on the "manufactured" blades have the centre pivot 5 mm off centre too.

With the "manufactured" wiper blades it is possible to adjust the effective position of the centre pivot. The short end can be set so that the wiper, at the end of its stroke,does not come over the lower screen frame. On measuring I discover that there is 15 mm difference between the lengths of the inner ends.
Driver's side = 75 mm
Centre = 65 mm
Passenger's side = 70 mm

What this means is that even in the best case the end of the standard wiper blade is going to hit the frame, thereby shortening the life of the blade.

This difference is because of the curve of the lower frame. Naturally I can't guarantee that all Morgans, left and right hand drive, have the spindles in the same place.

The length of the wiper arm from the centre of the spindle to the fixing "dot" of the bayonet is about 175 mm (the same length as the blade). With the current standard blade it would be better if it was 5 mm longer for the driver's side blade (any longer and the blade would risk hitting the side frame) and 15 mm longer for the centre wiper. Clearly an adjustable arm would give the possibility of 3 different lengths. If I could find a wiper arm with a fixed length of 190 mm I would be reasonably happy with that.

Regarding the headlight wiper blades I have been unable to find any that are 7" or 175 mm long. It would be no problem to get one slightly longer and cut down the rubber and the spring steel as the way they are made seems almost identical to the home made version.

Naturally we are still left wondering why MMC have not come up with a better solution as the numbers involved would easily warrant having a longer wiper arm (would not cost anything)and decent blades which might cost a few pence more.