Well it took a couple weeks but I got the wheels back from being re-powder coated.  The coating is doing much better this time.  The only catch was that I needed to sand down the powder coating on the front wheels to get them over the hubs.

But that is not the big news.  The big news is my wife gave me not one but three sets of wiper blades for the Jeep.  I admire her confidence.  For right now I am just going to try and get one set installed.  I took the driver’s side blade off and compared it to one of the new ones.

Driver’s side snapped right on.  Looks good.

Passenger side might be more of a problem though.  The arm and blade are completely different.  It took me a while to figure out how to get the blade off.  Turns out I just had to pull on the tab circled in red in the picture.

Oh yeah, totally different.  Now what?

My plan is to swap the rubber from the new blade into the frame of the old blade.  So I have to figure out how to take the old one apart.  My first clue is the word “lift”  on both ends.

Some fast work with a small screwdriver and the old (very, very, old) rubber slid out.

That metal tool in the picture is a chemical spatula intended for transferring and mixing chemicals.  I find it really handy for all kinds of scraping and prying jobs.  Including in this case getting the old blade out of the stainless rail bit.  The new blade is a different profile than the old one but will probably fit in the rail.

I was mostly right.  The rubber fits but the part above the rail is a little thicker than the old rubber.  That made the little “lift” caps not fit right.  So I trimmed the rubber a little bit and got the caps on.  This will work just fine.  Not a bad day’s work for Christmas.