anyone know where to find a short wiper refill for a very old wiper blade? I would like to keep my original blades on my '55 Stude (actually I upgraded to '56 blades and arms as the original 55 blades were 11" long and the springs in the arms were weaker) but I can't find rubber anywhere. Last time I did this I found some plastic- spined refills that I cut shorter and staked the rubber in with a punch, but now all I can find are metal ones which obviously can't be cut to length. They are 12" long and look a lot like the "71 series" refills here:
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but a search online does not show anyone that sells them that short.
I did drop an email to Trico (as they made the original blades) but I'm not real hopeful...
On my '73 maverick I painted a old set of the mustang's wipers silver and put in new rubber refills. It works really nice as with the larger wipers come right up to the top of the windshield. I can see out without scrunching down. I did have to scronge in my dad's garage for a set of converter pieces to go drom the old arms to the new wipers. They used to come with wipers for a while, maybe still do in the smaller sizes. I didn't want to go away from the original look either, but the correct appearance blades vanished from the market and I didn't want to risk losing a blade in traffic. (I've had that style slip off) It doesn't look bad and works better.
On refills. I've been able to find refills where the rubber portion can be removed from whatever 'holder' set up it has and then I can use the holder that I already have on the new rubber pieces. You can cut the rubber down and then slip it into the plastic you already have.
Also, this may not be acceptable, but the cheap wal-mart refills used a plastic holder when I bought a set few years back for the torqueless wonder car.
I have 11" blades and always seem to find the plastic 'cut to length' refills at the roadside truck stops. Mine never seem to give me warning, they just blow out in a storm on the highway, usually at night...
Mike
86/00 CJ7 Laredo, 33x9.5 BFG Muds, 'glass nose to tail > Hi all,
I may have to do that. I found some 11" blades for $5 apiece at Crap Boys, they look awful but they do fit on the 56-64 arms. I can't go any bigger than 12" because a) they'll run off the top of the windshield and b) if I do that they'll cross in the middle of the windshield and possibly catch on each other at the bottom of their stroke. (the windshield of a Stude C-K body is real short and upright.) I will have to actually try to fit them on the car though to see if they will actually work - I wonder if because they have a significantly higher profile they might interfere with the arms. (the arms are perfectly flat, no curve to them at all.)
I don't have the plastic anymore, it left with my old '56 Golden Hawk. I was running some NOS '55 blades on the '55 but now they're worn out. What I have now is some stock 56-64 blades with the rubber removed, but I still have the stock spline in two of them. (I have three blades total; one of my pet peeves being non-stock wiper blades on a nice looking car; when I'm at a swap meet and see any stock 12" blade in a vendor's "junk box" I'll buy it, assuming the owner doesn't want a fortune for it.) The stock spline looks something like this:
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so the rubber needs to be just the right shape to fit into it.
After a little bit of a web search, it looks like the original wipers for a Corvette were the same, e.g.
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they do sell refills for them but only the kind that you have to pull into your original spline
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$22.75 a pair for the REFILLS... yikes.
But they do look correct.
Have to check that out; I have some original blades with*out* the original spline in it, and the standard width plastic spline refills are what I remember using before. You won't believe this, but I have to pass five or six auto parts stores to get to a Wal-Mart...
Follow up: I sucked it up and ordered the repro rubber for the 'vette wipers and they look perfectly original. Kinda silly for a car as non- stock as mine but it should work. I just hope they last longer than the average parts store wiper... (not holding my breath.) I might have to get another pair to put on the car to drive it and then just put these on when I want it to look good...
Haven't had a chance to go by wal-mart yet, had to do the work thing this week...
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