P15 Newport Wiper Conversion issues resolved

[3046moparcoupe]

I hope this will help someone down the line. Granted it usually takes me longer than most, but I probably have a solid 48-60 hrs of work and research in figuring this out and making sure the info I'm sharing here with you is correct.

 

In short - the installation instructions that currently come with the Newport Clean Wipe Electric Wiper Motor conversion kits for the 1946-1948 Plymouth cars, are in error in regards to how the wiper linkage arms are supposed to connect to the new Newport wiper motor drive bracket. The way Newport currently has this drawn is exactly opposite of the only way they can/and must attach. I have written Darrel at Newport to let him know, and have not yet received anything back from him. I'm sure when many folks figure this out for themselves they just move on, but I have received a lot of help here on the forum and when I get the opportunity to help back, I am going to do so.

 

If your the guy that's putting the kit into your daily driver car, this error in the instructions won't throw you as big a curve as it does to the person that's building from scratch. Reason being, you can't even see much of your wiper linkage arms underneath the dash cowl, and you probably just connect the only arm that will come close to reaching the nearest anchor post on the drive brkt......but if your the person building from scratch - this is a real delima. Anyway - this might possible explain why the error in the installation instruction figure drawings has never been corrected.

 

Anyhoo - here's the sort and skinny of it...look at the hand drawing I have attached to this post,..it shows how Newport currently shows you to connect the wiper linkage arms to the new electric motor drive bracket. Connecting them this way is physically impossible, it will not work. Newports instructions/drawings were of such detail that it didn't make sense to me for them to be wrong, so I spent a ton of hours researching every aspect of my vacuum motor, the linkage arms by part number / TRICO, etc...trying to find out what might be wrong on my end of things, again giving Newport the benefit of the doubt - that their instructions were correct.

 

Nearing the end of all this researching, I thought I'd figured it out.....the linkage arm drive brkt on the oem vacuum motor is shaped like a boomerang, (V shaped), just like the drive arm brkt on the Newport electric motor, .........BUT..........the Newport drive arm brkt is clocked 180 degrees out of phase with the way the oem drive brkts are built.  I thought for sure I'd found the problem,...and Newport gave me their blessing in removing the drive brkt and turning it 180 degrees so that it would match the original curve of the oem brkt...again, I was sure this was gonna be the answer - but it wasn't,....the arms would hit together when the motor was activated....so I put the drive brkt back in its original orientation, and worked with the unit to get this resolved. Here's how I did it.

 

(I would like to be able to take credit for thinking of this, but I can't - I have to thank Darrel at Newport for making this suggestion

 

I positioned the brkt to where the linkage arms looked evenly spaced and clocked in as close to the same position as I could tell by eye, then I snugged the screw down to hold the brkt in place, then I took a 12v pwr supply and just touched pwr to the low speed wire, the arms would move a tiny bit and stop, then I'd repeat the process, etc, until the linkage arms were nearing their most outward movement of travel, then I could stop and compare and loosen my brkt screw, adjust accordingly, and continue moving the arms through their entire wiper motion. This resulted in getting the brkt attached to where it needed to be, without having the motor extend a linkage arm out too far on either side, hitting the stop posts, and putting the motor in a bind. Then I tightened the motor drive brkt down. Now their is a slot on the bracket that attached the entire Newport wiper motor to the cowl of the car, and it's there to allow you to move the entire motor a bit either up or down, to fine tune adjust,..(which is basically the same thing I did here in the paragraph above, but in my case - it would not move the drive brkt far enough and I was trying to hit on the passenger side first when the wiper went through its cycle).

 

In my opinion, the following note regarding the connection of the brkt to the motor is sort of a bummer, but as long as it works, no foul I suppose...it didn't give me much of a warm fuzzy when I was tightening it back up, that's for sure. 

 

....###note###when you look at the drive brkt on the back of the Newport Wiper Motor, you will see the edge of splines where the brkt attaches on to the motor shaft....I was saddened to find out that the splines are only on the brkt collar itself, the motor shaft is completely smooth, so the only thing holding your brkt in place on the shaft is how tight you torque down on the allen screw compressing the brkt collar onto the shaft with friction...it took a short cheater wrench on the end of my allen wrench to get the screw to originally break loose, and it gave me 4 little bark noises when I un-did it to remove the brkt, so when I tightened it back up, I repeated the process, tightened the screw down snug by hand, than used my short cheater hand wrench and got 4 little barks from it. as I torqued it on down,....pretty un-easy feeling for sure, I wasn't too happy to say the least,...how tight is tight ?? is this gonna try and move sometime in the future ? problem am I fixing to break this screw off ? problem,...anyway - I made the decision to stop, and the screw didn't break off, or crack " to my knowledge" , again, (peace of mind -  oh yeah ! oh boy ! are we having fun yet ), 

 

I am not here to bash Newport, I am thankful for their kit, and maybe my wiper linkage arm drive brkt being off enough to cause me the issues it did, was an isolated case,....you may not experience that. Seems like most everyone out there in the internet world has nothing but praises to say about them,...but I can tell ya for sure, at present the instructions for adding this kit to a P15 direct you to attach the curved linkage arm to the bottom post of the motor drive brkt., from the RH passenger side of the car, and to connect the straight linkage arm to the upper post on the motor drive brkt, from the LH drivers side of the car,...THIS IS 100% BACKWARDS AND IN CORRECT.....and NO, this is not a matter of looking at the instruction from either inside the car or from the front of the car, the drwgs are clear about what they are saying,and the drwgs are basically all ya get ,..

 

Do it exactly the opposite, curved arm from the LH driver side to the upper post and straight arm from the RH passenger side to the lower post...as shown in the attached drwg.

 

Best of luck,

Steve Gentry

 

 

Edited January 26, 2018 by 3046moparcoupe

[3046moparcoupe]

This drwg view is from inside the car looking forward.