65 Wiper Arm Restoration

[John O.]

I need to restore the finish of the Trico wiper arms on my 65 roadster. There are two finishes types(stainless & chrome) and the assembly is riveted together. Can anyone comment on restoring these or maybe refer someone who specializes in wiper arm assemblies.

Thank you,
John

[Jack H.]

Re: 65 Wiper Arm Restoration

Paragon offers a wiper arm restoration service. Doing it yourself isn't hard with some reservations.

The upper and lower arm pieces are simply stainless steel and with SS rouge and a bench grinder/buffing wheel, you can polish away to your heart's content to restore factory fresh cosmetics. The 'rub' comes when you get to the drive hub....

That's pot metal with flash/smack chrome. The chrome is VERY thin and it's easy as heck to 'burn through' if you polish aggressively! For those arms whose drive hubs are badly nicked/scarred, the restoration services do an R&R maneuver (remove and replace).

The drive hub attaches to the lower arm with rivet that acts as an axle and arm tension is achieved via a spring and clip joining the lower arm to the hub's attaching rivet. Adroit use of needle nose pliers (WATCH your fingers!) will let you disconnect the spring clip from the rivet. Then, you can drive out the rivet and remove the hub from the lower arm.

The services simply 'borrow' a drive hub from a donor Trico arm (doesn't have to be the unique Corvette arm with adjustable cant mechanism) and replace the old worn hub on your wiper arm(s). If you're VERY careful, you can drive out the SS rivet, and swap hubs yourself using a similar but good arm from any passenger car of the era then re-use the original rivet. But, those who restore wiper arms for a living have either tooled a rivet mfgr or located suitable off-the-shelf source(s) for replacement rivets and don't worry about careful extraction and the re-use of original SS rivets.

[John O.]

Re: 65 Wiper Arm Restoration

Jack:

Thanks for the great post. I'm gonna give this a shot as you descibe. I figured that rivet was going to be hard to save. I didn't know that Paragon offered a rebuild service which will be my backup plan.