Wipers spline dilema

decampos

decampos

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Gosh I need some help. Attempting to remove the wiper arms of my car (during the stripdown before a respray), they were seized to the splines and both the arms and the splines were damaged.

I bought new pivots from the BMW classic parts division (see diagram).

The the new splines (pictured) do not match the wiper arms (pictured). Do I need some kind of adapter or are they simply the wrong parts? Any suggestion on what I do next?

Many thanks in advance
(also, do you guys call them splines?)

wiper1.jpg

wiper2.jpg

wiper3.jpg
 
but better

it is the wrong part for the wiper arms you have, but you can get new arms with this VASTLY improved mount (a frigging nut, what a concept). the metal clip mount sucks and when it gives up, your wiper arm will take flight, and likely damage your paint on the way to the side of the highway.

i would sell your arms and get new ones that bolt on.
 
Don´t worry about the wipers

Alan,
you know from the experts on this board, with Murray in the lead, that these cars don´t handle rain or wash water very well. So if you refrain from driving in the rain, and using the wipers, there is no need to worry....
Sorry about this bad joke.
I don´t think the "later style" wiper mechanism was ever used on the E9. I got one from somewhere when buying what I thought was NOS. Perhaps BMW made the switch post `75 and that corresponding arms are available which in theory are better...
 
alanmcg said:
it is the wrong part for the wiper arms you have, but you can get new arms with this VASTLY improved mount (a frigging nut, what a concept). the metal clip mount sucks and when it gives up, your wiper arm will take flight, and likely damage your paint on the way to the side of the highway.

i would sell your arms and get new ones that bolt on.
Click to expand...

Ditto, I agree that the wiper spindle with a bolt on arm is an improvement over stock but unfortunately :( decampos is only half way home. He now has to find bolt on arms that are the right length and also hold the blades at the correct angle (to look right) when they land. It might be as simple as using the stock arms from a latter car or the arms may need a bit of tweaking to angle the blades correctly. I would certainly save the parts numbers on the bags for these spindles in case someone else wants to do the update down the road. ~ John Buchtenkirch
 
Thanks for your replies. I bought the pivots from shop.bmw-classic.com – It asks for your VIN and I chose the pivots from the diagram it provided. With a bit of googling just now there are in fact two different types of L/R pivots: those from '68, December — '75, November and those from '72, February — '75, November. Great. My car is in both of those categories.

I would look for the correct arms for these spindle types but I've already bought wiper arms from walloth and nesch (yep, the ones that cost just under £200,000).

I'm running out of mental energy to complete the painful restoration and was wondering if anyone knew of some kind of conversion one can perform on these spindles to make them accept the wiper arms. There surely must be some kind of fatter spline 'cap' that can screw onto the screw thread or something like that?

Any help very much appreciated
 
Don't believe the dates in the catalog, lots of inaccurate info there. Pivots didn't change during e9 production. Since it asks for last 7 digits of VIN that causes all kinds of problems since it overlaps 17 digit VINs.
 
Yes for their parts datatbase I would enter your car by build date month/year and not VIN.

HB Chris said:
Don't believe the dates in the catalog, lots of inaccurate info there. Pivots didn't change during e9 production. Since it asks for last 7 digits of VIN that causes all kinds of problems since it overlaps 17 digit VINs.
Click to expand...
 
not sure

im not sure chris, i think there might be some e9's out there with bolt on arms. anybody out there?
i believe ive got one of these arms in my stash, ordered one for my car (74) from mesa, and they sent me a bolt on one. makes me think old part was superseded.
ill dig through my stuff later today, take some pictures and advise on part number.
decampos, if i have one, you can have it.
 
Alan,

Not sure, but looking for parts using only a 7 digit VIN is dangerous. The newer sites don't recognize the change from 7 to 17 digits. As Steve says using build date in RealOEM helps.
 
here it is

so here is the part and part number in question - as you can see its the passenger side arm, and is not supposed to have the wing on it like the one on my car does. i tried to get one without the wing, but nla. so i believe the one with the nut mount is the correct shape (chris or someone else with wingless px arm pls confirm).

decampos, if you have a black px arm, with no wing, i will gladly trade you mine for that one, then you will only have to buy one new one.
 

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RealOEM says e21 and e9, e9 page says only in conjunction with hex nut. After these were NLA they may have substituted the e21 arm with the e21 spindle requiring the nut. Maybe.

Edit. Looks like in 79 the e21 wiper matches e9 except for the nut, earlier e21 had a different wiper blade attachment at the end. Another BMW shortcut, let the owner figure it out!
 
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plan b

actually, now that ive looked at realoem, it looks like the newer style bolt on arms are only $25.00 a piece (am i reading that correctly?) and both driver side and px side are avail. Vs $161 each for the clip on arms, and only driver side, with wing, is avail. so decampos, prob not even worth paying to have mine shipped to you.

i think i will do what youve done, buy the new spindles, and swap to the bolt on arms. seems like a very good upgrade for the restomod crowd. decampos, can you pls provide part number of the bolt-on spindles?
 
Thanks for the replies guys. alanmcg, that was really helpful. I've just phoned Walloth and Nesch and gave them the part number for the other style of wiper arm. They're going to exchange the arms they sold me and I'll even get a little money back too. Hopefully everything is going to be fine. The car will soon be back on the road! (for about a week before putting it away for the winter).
 
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