My wipers work! Now I need blades

EngineerLecompte

Whodda thunk it.

I drove my 51 Hornet to the NW chapter meeting in Tulalip yesterday. If you are in the greater Puget Sound area and didn't come, shame on you. The car really wasn't safe to take out of city limits until recently, so this was the furthest and hardest its been driven in probably 10 years. Maybe longer. I even had it on I5 for a few miles to avoid traffic and like a proud and elderly athlete, it complained and wheezed the whole time.

Forecast was for rain to start around 5.30 and it arrived about 3.00. The wipers did not work for the previous owner, so they hadn't functioned in 20+ years. The cables are all free and in surprisingly good condition but the motor is ancient and the vacuum lines decrepit. I have a sunvisor, and Rainex on the windshields, and figured if it rained I could make do and pick my way home on Highway 99.

I played with the knob on the dash a few times at stoplights for the hell of it, and could detect a little bit of vacuum coming from the washer button. After a few feeble movements, they made a jerky cycle on their lonesome. With a asthmatic gasp they actually started cycling. Cycling well.

Well, as well as vacuum wipers could be expected to work on my arthritic Hornet. All these years it was assumed the motor was shot and it appears that it had just became sticky. Once the original stiction -that's a word, look it up- was overcome, the internals are/were in good enough condition to come back to life. I'll look in the manual to see if there is any maintenance items to perform at the 67 year interval, but so far it works again. Good thing too, it vomited down rain last night. Much more than expected, and the wipers came in handy towards the end.

Since I appear to have a working accessory, I need new blades. The wipers have decorations since at least the 90s and are pretty hard. What do you'all use for replacement blades?

2manyprojects

look on ebay 1948 thru 1954 chevy and ford used the same blades.

Jon B

and if none of those ideas work, go to the www.wiperman.com website, they furnish new blades for most old Hudsons and other makes.
By the way, did you lubricate the inside of your wiper motor? There is a paddle with a leather seal which gets hard. By pumping various lubricants into the motor's intake pipe (like neat's foot oil, which rejuvenates leather) and letting them sit for a day or so, you can limber up the works.

Val

wiperman.com I believe ficken wiper service is the place I got mine. My vacuum wipers aren't great but I leave them as it was from the factory. I used brake fluid to lubricate the motor.

Nevada Hudson

Was told that the blades are the same as the VW bug--air cooled engine ones.