I am reinstalling my wiper door after being off the car for many years. Question on how tight the pivot bolts should be. I found if I put the pivot bolts in loosely, the ones which hold the door to the lift mechanism, it seems to work OK. If I tighten them at all they bind.

Is this normal? Wondering if I may have too much paint build up around the holes where the bushings are located. The lift mechanism has been throroughly cleaned and repainted. If this is typical, do people use thread locker to keep them form backing out over time?

While I'm at it. Anybody know when to use shims, the ones for mounting the lift mechanism to the firewall? To keep the gap between the wiper door, grille, and end of the hood even? Or is it to avoid bending the shaft slightly when the mounts on the firewall may not be perfectly in line? Assuming any misalignment may cause binding.

 

I just put mine back on this week after being off for about a year. I didn't tighten them too much, just put on some red loctite. Make sure you have the nylon/plastic bushings on both sides of the metal piece the bolt goes through. I did make some shims, but I'm still not really happy with my alightment. What makes it infuriating is there isn't that much to adjust for mine to be as far off as they seem to be. All I did was take the covers off and repaint the hardware.

 

Hi bb,
I found that I had to widen the holes in the firewall a little bit to get enough side to side adjustment I needed to even the gaps.
The shims between the mechanism mounts and the firewall move the door and grill forward and rearward to get the gap at the windshield the way you want it.
Once I had the door where I wanted it I found I needed to elongate the holes in the grill to get the gap at the hood and door the way I wanted. I also needed to make some shims to put between the grill and mechanism to get the arc of the grill to match the arc of the hood.
It was a lot of work I discovered.
I ended up making nylon shims to set all the gaps and THEN gradually tightened everything. I'd found that without the shims to hold everything firmly in place things would shift as I tightened the fasteners.
I hope this helps a bit!
Regards,
Alan

PS: I found the the door 'stops' actually affected how close the door was to the windshield. Once the door hits that stop on it's way closed, the mechanism continues to move a little and actually then moves the door rearward.

 

Hi Alan,
Thanks for the tips, very much appreciated.

I noted some strange shifts in alignment, door following the contour the the grille, or not, as I raised or lowered one side or the other. I thought about making shims as well. For now I have to put the alignment issues aside while I figure out why the linkage seems to bind. I found that if I loosened the bolts holding the door to the linkage I could get the door to operate though a bit sluggish reaching the point where the wiper safety switch tripped. The linkage had been sitting for almost twenty years, spring tensioner portion was seized. Quite an adventure getting it freed up, took hours of intense twisting to get it loose. Thought I may break the unit given the force it took to get that sleeve to free up. That part works freely now. Questioning whether the other joints have stiffened over time.

Wondered about a possible misalignment between the pivot bolts and linkage but it seems unlikely. The door and linkage are original to the car. Worked fine when I bought the car. Only thing done to the door was cleaning the threads with a tap. No new holes, no helicoils, etc. The bolts can be tightened without stripping threads so I doubt the hole has been enlarged. The slight bind I get when tightening the bolts may be just enough to cause the unit to get stuck, combined with stiffness in the linkage.

Gotta love these cars, if it's not one thing it's another. One step backward for every two forward.