From my seat in my home office I could see the missing wiper arm glaring at me, waiting for me to get the time to pull the dash and install the $$$ wiper arm shaft assembly to replace the one that I torqued to death after my cat had done his final pullup on it. So, being the nice day it was, I came to a stopping place--workwise--about an hour ago and thought about Frank Condelli's advice to drill and tap the shaft. The led to me reaching for a big flat file, and that led to grabbing a centerpunch and hammer just to see what would happen. Off center. Grabbed the file and flattened the shaft end again in a few seconds, and this time grabbed a 5X jeweler's loupe and got that punch right in the center and whacked it. I step drilled up to the size for a 6MM x 1.0 bolt and quickly tapped it to about 3/4 inch deep. It worked beautifully. I'm keeping the new assembly in the car just in case, but if it ever breaks again, at least an easy out will do the job, and no need to pull the dash. The top of the shaft is 6mm, so there is no room for error on the centering. Using the jeweler's loup helped get it perfect. I took a photo for the unbelieving. Jim |
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