So I was tired of the stupid pin design on our wiper blades. As it wipes across the glass, the blade assembly has so much play that it drags the blade at an angle and also causes it to skip across the window.

It appears that Mazda only used that pin design on the first gen, as all their cars afterwards used a hook. This hook is the current way nearly every modern car uses, so it must be decent. It also minimizes the back and forth play that was present in the pin design.

I bought some 626 wiper arms from the junkyard that used the hook design. Unfortunately these a both slightly thicker and wider than our arms, but I took up the extra by cutting the stock arms at the bend. I don't think you can really notice.

So I cut the stock arms right at the bend. I also drilled a hole 1/3 the width of the stock arm right at the cut point. By doing this to both pieces, I had more surface area for my welds, especially after grinding. I also beveled the edges to ensure that I would get a solid weld.

From the center of the hook, I measured 4mm and did the same cutting and drilling procedure. The two pieces were then welded, grinded, filed and smoothed before a few coats of filler primer and a semigloss topcoat.

Old arms on bottom with new hooks welded to a spare set of arms:

They are shorter, but this is to account for the difference in mounting. The blade sits in the same location on the car.

Hooks:


Bloody pins:


And the final product:

 

sounds like a great writeup and install. however, the pics are not working on my end.

 

People have been raping my bandwith on the server lately. Give it a while, they will load.

 

It's done out of love, Sarge...

 

It would appear that the company who provides my DNS nameserver is down. Hopefully it will be back up soon.

 

must be back up beacuse i can see all the pics in the first post. great work btw!! looks like they're stock!!

 

Good work.

 

Server is back up and working. Someone had DDoS attacked my DNS server.

Anyway, I am surprised no one else had the problem of poor wiper operation.

 

great job man only downside i see is that its too much work in my point of view, but props on the very clean install, might be something to look into later. . . i do need some wipers

 

I guess I'm not the only one who thought "wtf was mazda thinking?" with those wipers!

My passenger side wiper actually came off one morning...

 

i like! you should take the next step and put longer blades on it

 

They do. Well I do. I might do this when I'm not busy trying to put my car back into one piece.

 

Clean work. I like. the only downside is that you loose the ability to spin your wiper blades and pretend your cars an airplane with duel propellers

 

I really like this idea.

 

nice job. I want to change mine too. Im tired of my blades skipping.

 

Lately I've been getting more and more irritated by my wipers, but not yet enough to do anything about it. Good writeup, I may make use of it in the future.

 

Good looking mod. Looks factory.

 

hahahah, props mate.

 

looks great...you should produce..more..hehe

 

I'd purchase one, when can I send my deposit?

 

Put some WD40 on your blades and wax your windshield or RainX and they won't skip.

 

It's little stuff like this that makes 1st genners the best. Props for thinking outside of the box.

 

You should make a bunch of those and sell 'em as a group buy, and if you do, put me down for a set!

 

For the DIY without a welder you could drill two small hols and put a small nut and bolt to hold it. Or rivets,

 

Its not worth it as it cost me $20 for a set of 626 arms and $20 for a spare set of rx-7 arms at the boneyard.