Morris Minor Owners Club

hi, my car is a 63 model, it has the clap type wipers. is it possible to change to the later type? also what is needed and how is it done thanks

do you mean tandom wipers, if so i think the spindle holes are in a different place, if not then you need a late wiper motor and a late wiper rack and spindles

ohh, if the holes are different, then i will stick to the ones i have. they just seem slow.

may be the old grease in the wiper motor and cable is so old and thick

take it out and put new grease in

worth a try, never thought of that

Dribble some oil down the wiper spindles - they sometimes seize up! New set of brushes (and cleaning of the motor commutator) can work wonders too. It is also possible to weaken the motor field when running in wet weather to get faster clapping!

Yes, grease the spindles and rack before they sieze up! have had this happen on the Traveller and on the project convertible one of the spindles was so siezed that I had to cut it off.

Annoyingly, new spindles seem to suffer from poor quality as they do not have as big an arc as the original ones- will pass the MOT, but is annoying. So keep your originals good before it is too late!

thanks guys for the info, will give it a clean up and see what happens

Are you sure the 'new' wheelboxes are not just working as they should - and the old ones are worn - and flop about more !

Hi Roy, possible, but then the old wheelboxes (before one siezed) used to actually sweep all the screen from screen pillar to nicely overlap the arc of the other wiper at the buklhead end. The new ones have only about a 60 degree arc and in order to sweep the visible area of screen you have to put the wiper arm on the spindle so it parks several inches up the screen.

Are Mini spindles different? it's possible they sold me the wrong spindles.

I've had the old one soaking in oil and it moves now, I'm trying to see if I can revive it!

The spindles should not make any difference, they are simply a gear wheel meshing with the "teeth" on the rack. The wiper travel is controlled by the travel of the arm on the wiper motor in the same way that the throw on the crankshaft determines the stroke of the engine.

But these spindles look to have a different number of 'grooves" on the big wheel that the rack fits into. Literally, all I did with two minors in my collection was remove a siezed wiper spindle and replace with a new one. Both cars now have one wiper that no longer sweeps the arc it used to while the existing original OK spindle in each case still sweeps the arc it did previously. The travel on the arm of the wiper motor is the same for both wipers on each car, it cannot affect the drivers side new spindle and not affect the arc of the passenger side spindle on the same car at the same time.

Therefore, it must be a problem with the spindles. I am going to take this up with the supplier when the weather improves and i get one of my cars down to visit them. They may not be aware of the issue.

chickenjohn wrote:

Are Mini spindles different? it's possible they sold me the wrong spindles.

Don't know about mini ones, but clap hands differs from later ones - smaller arc.

The Moss catalogue lists several different wheel boxes, up to 162444, to 448801, to 939635, to 1039564 which are the correct ones for your car and 1039564 onwards which are the parallel wipers. There are also three different motors, Series MM/II, 948/1098 and 1098 self park.