Ever since the big rebuild, the 109’s wipers have over-swept the screen when wet, especially at speeds of over 40 mph. Â This not only damaged the paint of the wind screen frame, but also wrecked the wiper blades and made a loud noise on each over-run. Â In the past I have tried several rectifications, including replacing again the wiper cable and spindle boxes, stripping and rebuilding the wiper motor and gear box, replacing the wiper arms and shortening the 11″ Bosch blades to the 10″ of factory spec blades, all to no avail
The fix is arguably a botch aimed at controlling the symptoms rather than finding the cause of the excess movement, but it works perfectly. Â In a nutshell, I have glued rubber blocks onto the windscreen frame along the lower edge of the glazing to restrict the movement of the blades. Â It even prevents any noise, which is a mild surprise; I expected a small knock, but it’s perfectly quiet. Â This has enabled me to fit new blades without concern over their longevity and to repaint the frame.
To repaint the frame, I used Halfords load bed liner aerosol. Â It seems very tough and should resist stone chips better than the matt black paint previously used. Â I also resprayed the pioneer tool handles with the same load liner paint as their existing paint was splitting and peeling.
I also replaced the thermostat as the engine was taking 15 minutes to reach normal temperature; while Tdis are notoriously cool running and slow to warm up, this was not normal and has been making the 0400 commute to work even more unpleasant than it needs to be. Â I found the rubber seal in the centre of the old thermostat to be distorted around its whole circumference and split completely from inner to outer circumference in two places, so clearly wrecked. Â I’m looking forward to much faster warm-up times now.
Nice to know that the halfords spray on bedliner is OK, I was thinking of spraying Annies load bed and floor plates in it as well as the exposed metal on the inside of the doors. The current paint, only painted two years ago, is chipping off everywhere from very regular use.
Your wiper issue is odd but similar to a problem I have. On Annie her wipers sweep a shorter arc than Ciggys despite both of them being fitted with what look like Series 3 motor units. I’d say Annies sweeps about 10 degrees less than Ciggys and that makes a big difference as the blades don’t catch the frame at all. I’m wondering if Ciggy has been fitted in the past with a 90/110 motor unit which might sweep a bigger arc due to less framework on the screen?? I can’t remember what a 90/110 unit looks like but I’m guessing that Land Rover probably kept the parts similar or identical to the Series. I have no idea otherwise as to why two seemingly identical wiper motor/gearbox combos would give different sweeps.
Nice to know I’m not the only one setting off on my commute at silly o’clock, I leave home 4 – 4:30am too. 🙂
The wiper cable and spindle boxes are the same, but I think the Defender wiper motor is very slightly different: I think it has a different lug position on the driven gear for a shorter sweep than the SIII. I was considering fitting one to cure the problem…
Hi Nick/Ian,
IIRC the Series III and early 90/110’s used the same wiper motor but unsure if the internal gearing is the same. There are three different gearwheels for the inside of the wiper motor for the 90/110/Defender, again IIRC, they give a 95 or 100, 110, and 130 or 135 degree sweep. I can’t access the file I have with the info in it at the moment as it has corrupted and it isn’t in my Defender workshop manual. I’m not sure if the later gearwheels work with the Series wiper motor but I believe so. Having changed everything else I swapped the 110 degree gearwheel on my Td5 for the lesser sweep gearwheel to cure it’s oversweep problem. Can’t remember if it was stamped 95 or 100 degrees though. I’m not sure if the spindle wheelboxes have the same tooth count on the Series as on the 90/110’s, this would cause a sweep variance depending on the gearwheel fitted into the wiper motor itself, I know they’re a different size on the 300Tdi to the Td5.
Regards,
Neil.
Thanks Neil, that would confirm my findings with my two series boxes having different sweeps, looks like somebody fitted the wrong gear or even whole assembly into Ciggy at some point. I will try and identify the correct parts and get them fitted.
Ian