Today’s show (1/29/2012) there was a call about a sticking windshield wiper. The car guys recommended a new motor. There is an alternative solution you need to know about. My 1986 Sentra experienced similar problem while i was driving the freeway in the middle of what we call a gully washer. I was e…

I think old cars from the past used to have manual wipers. The driver had to operate them manually, with some kind of lever from the inside. Anybody remember this? I think some kind of back-up should be built into cars for things that fail regularly. They should have a manual backup on all cars…

They indeed did; Model A Fords (among others I’m sure) had the beloved vacuum powered wiper, with the motor mounted on the top of the windshield frame. It also had a small lever for hand operation. This particular Model A belonged to a buddy who bought it as a restoration project; the motor was so t…

I remember a 1947 Jeep that had a crank operated wiper on the passenger side. The two school buses I rode when I was in elementary school had wipers that had a handle inside the bus to operate the wipers if the vacuum motor failed. One bus was a 1939 model with a Wayne body on a GMC chassis and th…

Luckily, Triedag, I was never encumberred with an academic education. I feel sure that I reached my intellectual limits when I read Erma Bombeck and Jean Shephard. But some of us can recognize our talents and make the best of them. A friend repaired a Mercedes Benz for a doctor who contested the bil…

Rod Knox–my brother has a Ph.D. in English and taught a couple of years in a small state college. When the president of the college told the faculty in a meeting that faculty were a dime a dozen, my brother wrote out his resignation, took it to the president, gave him a dime and said “Go buy a doze…

… I was surely not going to call AA and wait for a tow.Which of the 12 steps deals with towing stranded motorists?

Good one, jt! A Freudian slip on the part of the OP, perhaps? ;-))

This doesn’t sound too particularly safe to me. Or healthy…if that water molds-up the carpeting. Calling the auto club and getting a tow is a far better solution IMHO.

Triedaq, I’d love to have seen the guy’s jaw drop when he heard that a PhD/former professor/lawyer was a plumber. It reminds me of the time a doctor needed his plumbing fixed and when presented the bill complained that it was more than he charged his patients. “I know”, replied the plumber. “I us…

Failing wipers - 'real men' solution

The Show

Rod-Knox January 30, 2012, 7:26am 3

The wiper motor failed on a Ford van years ago and I pulled the linkage off the motor, linked a dozen or so rubber bands to the passenger side wiper arm and a shoe lace to the driver’s side. I drove 60 miles home pulling and releasing the shoe lace.

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Failing wipers - 'real men' solution

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