Wiper blades

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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.

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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.

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Driver’s side snapped right on.  Looks good.

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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.

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Oh yeah, totally different.  Now what?

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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.

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

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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.

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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.