For many reasons - mostly the rubbish weather and being far too busy on other stuff - cars have had almost no attention lately, which is sad.
Anyway, today I was able to dedicate some time the the Vitesse, which has been patiently sitting in the shed since the autumn. Connected the battery and of course it started at first touch of the key. There are loads of small things left to fettle, but today I tackled the wipers which have been parking way too far up on the glass.
A bit of time stripping off the scuttle etc soon revealed this, though the wipers took some persuasion to come off the spindles
One of the downsides of trying to store cars in the countryside is the inevitability that mice will find their way in:
A cosy nest in the linkage void.
So, on to the investigation. There are at least 3 different, and incompatible, variations of the 800 wiper mechanism, and this car had an amalgam of all the wrong parts - mostly from a Mk 2. Perfectly understandable that bits are fitted to keep it working, but the result was not great. The fasteners that hold the motor onto its mounting plate were loose, fasteners were completely missing between the spindles and the scuttle - overall not too pretty.
The main difference between Mk1 and Mk2 systems is that Mk 2 just park on the glasss, but Mk1 tuck down behind the bonnet. This is acheived by an extra bit of mechanism on the first link - see here:
In the pic is the motor, then the Mk1 link and the standard Mk2 item that is more common. The way the mechanism works to tuck the wipers down on their last stroke is that the motor actually reverses its direction of rotation which activates a cam with the effect of making that link 3 or 4 mm longer when rotating in that direction. Just enough to increase the sweep angle and tuck the wipers away. When they are switched on the cam returns, the linkage shortens, and the wipers describe their normal arc on the glass. All very clever.
The other variation of design was when the size of the ball joints was increased slightly sometime late in Mk1 production - which means not all links are interchangeable.
Fortunately I have a box full of assorted wiper linkages and was eventually able to sort out a compatible set without too much slop in them.
Getting it all together and working took some time, since there are no datums for where to fit the link to the motor, or the wipers to the spindle - so had to figure out a method from first principles. Eventually, after a few failed attempts, it all works as Rover intended and parks nicely again.
A small victory perhaps, but every little helps.
Tim
