FREAKING WAKE UP CALL: preventative life saving check
 

Hey guys, I had a HUGE wakeup call last night. I was driving down I5 from Portland. It was raining really hard (hard enough that my high setting was having trouble keeping up)on my wipers any way, I pulled off to drive a backroad highway. I was on the highway for 5 minutes when my wipers went from right to left, popped, and stayed far left. I had to drive for 4 miles is HEAVY rain before I could find a pull off. I thought that every car that passed me on the busy highway was going to be a head on collision of 110 MPH combined.
I got towed home (6 miles) Because I could not see. If this had happened 5 minutes earlier when I was on I5, I have a pretty good understanding of the situation to say that I would have been in a large wreck and or fatal wreck because of traffic conditions.

Please check your wiper bushings!!!!!! its scary that a tiny piece of rubber could have taken me out for good. there were 3 deteriorated rubber bushing on my wiper arms. they all popped off the male ball recievers easily. the new ones are nylon and fit tight. they even took alot of play out of my wiper arms.

all you have to do is remove the cowl cover just below windshield, remove the 4 TORX screws on drivers side and pull out the wiper motor and attached wiper arms. inspect the bushings or better yet just buy new ones for 6$.

Im still counting my lucky stars
and really wanting to look out for my XJ nation!

:thumbup1:

It wouldn' t hurt to grease wiper arm assembly while your in there checking either. Just sayin.

please take 20 minutes for this. they are the only rubber/ plastic pieces other than the wiper motor skirt and or some plastic washers

yes great point, next weekend I am removing it once more to put a quick bead weld in the middle of the cross brace becasue it has begun to crack. I will then paint it to stop rust and GREASE! thanks

as requested brother i will be checking mine tomorrow thanks for the heads up i am sorry to hear it sounds like a very pants filling experience and im glad to hear a fellow xj nation brother/sister is OK

RAIN-X does wonders too, a good back up for when the 20 year old plastic bushings crap out on you.

It would also help to have a wiper motor that can move the blades faster than a 3 legged turtle....are those bushings universal?

YA I just learned about why to carry rain X in my rig. It all worked out the best for the situation, no wreck and easy fix

They are universal. Theyre usually generic packs of 6 pcs or so for chrysler/jeep-Dodge. they have 2 vertical ribs on the outside to keep it from spinning and 1 around the bottom where it pops into the wiper arm.they look like the ones in the pic I posted but those only have 1 vertical rib

They are also one of those pieces that a store usually only has 1 pack of at a time or so in my experience and if you want to get all 3 new ones you may have to buy 1-2 packs of 6 bushings becasue most packs have 2 of those, not 3.

i dont even have wipers. and i live in western washington!!!! haha nah just playing i defienatly have wipers and have to use them almost 365 days of the year up here

Anyone happen to have a parts store part# such as at NAPA or something? This would be helpfull info to add to a tech sticky for all members to see for future reference.

advance/shucker/kragen auto parts sku #Part No. 030-203
auto zone part # 49447

X2

im doing this sunday, what would you use to grease? WD-40? or would you do something like control arm and sway arm heavy grease? im not going to grease near those nylong bushings, i dont want to help them get loose, but I am going to grease the other joints and the wiper motor

BTW I am going to take pix of everything I do so you guys can see the whole assembly, my weld bead on the cracked frame, paint job, and grease job