After a mere 24 years and 300,000 miles of near continuous use (I live in Seattle) my windshield wipers stopped working. Wiper motor seemed to be working so I took it out to get to the wiper transmission. The bushing connecting the linkage to the ball joint of the wiper motor had disintegrated and so the linkage fitting no longer stays on the ball joint. Toyota does not sell the bushing and it would appear that the OEM part is in the hundreds of dollars. I’m about to experiment with copper tubing and/or scrap pieces of rubber etc, ad nauseum I’m sure, to make something work. However, if anyone has any ideas or experience with this I’d love to hear it.
Copper tubing sounds great. Anything you can fabricate will probably work well enough. I like to drill things out and replace them with bolts and washers and nuts, oh my. There are lots of Japanese cars in the junkyard. Sometimes the parts are very similar between makes.
Thanks for the input. I have done some sniffing around in junkyards but that bushing seems to be destroyed whenever the wiper motor is removed. I’m thinking I may try fabricating one out of a hardish rubber squeegee(sp?) that autobody guys use. I think it would stay in the fitting on the linkage while still allowing the ball joint to pass through and keep it there. If that fails I’ll try the copper tubing and/or the bolts and washers, but I had hoped to avoid having to grind the ball joint off of the wiper motor actuating arm… C’est la vie! At least the wiper motors themselves seem indestructable and are pretty cheap and easy to find.
My 86 pickup wiper transmission went out six years ago. I’ve replacrd the bushing with a brass rod clip I made myself, the last one lasted about 4 years. This is living in Seattle and teaching skiing from Oregon to Montana. Look at other wiper systems that use a clip instead of a press bushing for the concept. Cheers!