Chevy wiper arms, (ok, its on a venture) Options

[marka]

Howdy,

Hey, so I apparently manhandled the wiper arms on our chevy venture a bit too much this morning clearing them of snow/ice. I stripped the splines out of the arm on the driver's side.

This caused much hilarity, as the driver's side arm is in front of the passenger side arm, which (when wipers were turned on) would then mount the driver's side arm and attempt to produce little baby wiper arms, without much in the way of good consequences... :-)

Anyway, I pulled the arm off, and used a pick to clean out the splines on the stud. The stud splines seems fine, btw.

Do I need to get a replacement wiper arm, or will the stud self form splines in the (soft, it seems) wiper arm? Other than "get it in the right place, dumbass" is there a method to align the wiper arms if I should reuse the old one? I don't recall seeing a keyed spline on the stud, but I also didn't finish cleaning out the metal from between the splines...

Anyone know?

Thanks!

Mark

[z28jeff]

This happened on a Sunfire GT my wife had years ago. The wipers were left on the delay setting when the car was shut off the night before. (It had been raining) The temps dropped overnight and the wipers froze to the windshield. The next day I got in and started it up (not realizing the wipers were left in the on position) to see the passenger-side wiper arm sweep across the windshield while the driver-side stayed frozen in place. (IMG:http://www.frrax.com/rrforum/style_emoticons/default/banghead.gif)
I removed the arm, cleaned up the shavings and tried it again, but it wouldn't stay in sync with the ps wiper as it was obviously slipping. For whatever reason, I decided to put a few wraps of electrical tape around the splines to try to get a tighter fit for a temporary fix. To my surprise it worked. In fact it worked so well, I never did fix it, and drove it like that for another 2 years before I totaled it. (IMG:http://www.frrax.com/rrforum/style_emoticons/default/dry.gif)
You're right about no keyed spline. You'll just have to use your best judgement.

This post has been edited by z28jeff: Feb 20 2008, 05:10 PM

[Ojustracing]

I get alot of the GM through the door with this issue. What we do here is clean the splines up on the linkage and use some red anerobic sealer on the taper part of the arm. Re-install and tighten the crap out of it. If it works your done if not it needs a wiper arm.
Was the Nut loose on the arm? Most of the time we find the nut loose, if it sliped just a few times you should be okay for re-install.

John

[marka]

Howdy,

Thanks John & Jeff...

Yep, I was just coming here to post what I did, mostly just in case someone searches on Venture wiper arm problems on frrax... :-)

I cleaned out the splines, and then just re-installed and tighted the nut pretty good. Seems to work fine.

The nut wasn't _loose_ but it wasn't particularly tight either.

Thanks folks!

Mark