Well, I went to fit my new wiper linkage arm this morning, slightly uneasy that it's the second one in 16 months. Sure enough it is the ball that is worn and it turns out that the new arm just slips off and on.
During testing it popped off and the two blades tangled, mangling the passenger side one.
I then set about removing the whole wiper assembly. It's actually an easy enough job.... once the entire heater blower box is out. Now that I can get a good look at the ball it's incredible - more like a rugby ball than round. Unfortunately it doesn't look like the bit that's worn comes off the rest of the assembly so I need a replacement for the lot. I called Simon Butterworth but he's shut until Tuesday. I toyed with taking the one off the Turbo for about 2 minutes but I can't really face twice the work.
In taking off the heater blower box I discovered that it has been off before and the vacuum pipe that operates the cold air flaps via the two metal things on the ends (I assume it's cold air flaps) was trapped when it was refitted and hence split. Fortunately it's plenty long enough that I could cut the split off (in fact it's because it was too long it was trapped I expect) and that will hopefully be a cure for the tendency the heater has always had to get cooler at high speed and then warm up at slower speeds meaning I have to mess with the temperature knob more than usual.
Finally I checked the radio amplifier in the vain hope it was to blame for the poor analogue radio reception I have been getting. Blow me if it wasn't disconnected and it now works noticeably better even on the drive where it sounded fine before. I guess I'll start getting traffic reports with my DAB a bit more reliably now, once I have wipers and can use the car again.
All in all I have decided not to set the thing on fire then, at least not today, anyway.
During testing it popped off and the two blades tangled, mangling the passenger side one.
I then set about removing the whole wiper assembly. It's actually an easy enough job.... once the entire heater blower box is out. Now that I can get a good look at the ball it's incredible - more like a rugby ball than round. Unfortunately it doesn't look like the bit that's worn comes off the rest of the assembly so I need a replacement for the lot. I called Simon Butterworth but he's shut until Tuesday. I toyed with taking the one off the Turbo for about 2 minutes but I can't really face twice the work.
In taking off the heater blower box I discovered that it has been off before and the vacuum pipe that operates the cold air flaps via the two metal things on the ends (I assume it's cold air flaps) was trapped when it was refitted and hence split. Fortunately it's plenty long enough that I could cut the split off (in fact it's because it was too long it was trapped I expect) and that will hopefully be a cure for the tendency the heater has always had to get cooler at high speed and then warm up at slower speeds meaning I have to mess with the temperature knob more than usual.
Finally I checked the radio amplifier in the vain hope it was to blame for the poor analogue radio reception I have been getting. Blow me if it wasn't disconnected and it now works noticeably better even on the drive where it sounded fine before. I guess I'll start getting traffic reports with my DAB a bit more reliably now, once I have wipers and can use the car again.
All in all I have decided not to set the thing on fire then, at least not today, anyway.
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