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MG MGB Technical - Wiper arm - which one?

Once again my wiper fell off, more than once I have had to walk back down the road and find it and stragely enough it is always raining. This time it came off on a motor way so I could not stop and look for it. My friendly MG parts supplier has given me a new arm and blade which is a Tex Classic which has a clamp screw (slightly different to the other side)to solve my problem of a worn spline. Now it is Christmas I can get a new matching one for the other side.
I have a 1970 MGB, right hand drive with two wipers, the problem - my origional arms and the new one have a crank angle of 12 degrees but the wipers have never sat parallel to the bottom of the wind screen. If I order a Tex Classic wiper with a 20 degree crank angle I believe it will sit nice and parallel to the bottom of the screen, any advice?
I have looked at all the pictures of MG wiper blades in all my books and everyone is different is a different angle and they all appear to park in different positions.

David Levy

Easy. The arms can be bent in a vice to what ever angle you require. Use a soft jaw to grip the end of the arm and slowly bend to the correct angle. If it twists a bit simply clamp in vice to flatten
jim soutar

Yours must be correct David - they park exactly as do mine (lol)
Roger T

David
I just checked the angle on mine - probably 12 degrees. They seem to sit with the blade fairly parallel to the windscreen in the proper park position.
There is a fair bit of looseness in mine where the blade attaches - so the blade could be anywhere from 8 degrees to nearly 20 degrees from the arm itself.

Yours look somewhat straighter than mine and don't look like they would be parallel to the bottom of the screen even if you rotated the arm on the spline a bit. The geometry of the spline position relative to the bottom edge of the screen, and the arm length will dictate the crank angle that you need.

John
John Minchin

I dont think the park position of the wipers on a British car of this era is an exact science. Depending on how wet the screen was when they were parked mine look from pretty much like you picture to this

Stan Best

Mine lie dead flat to the bottom of the screen unless switched off with a dry screen, but there is a huge variation in side as well as angle (Clausagers picture of the 64 being the other extreme), see http://www.mgb-stuff.org.uk/electricstext2.htm#parking
PaulH Solihull

Thanks all for the helpfull advice. I will order the arm with 20 deg. angle and let you know how I get on.
David Levy

When I had my old mini minor back in the UK, I made a rear screen wiper. Halfords in those days sold a wiper arm which was marketed as suitable for a variety of small vehicles because it had an adjustable 'arm'. Can one still get these? Might be just ideal to fiddle with. Mike
J.M. Doust

Just recieved wiper blade and arm from Tex Auto. very happy with product and service.
As you can see the 20 Deg. crank angle on the driver side sits better than the 12 deg. angle on the passenger side.

David Levy

Looking back at the original workshop manual - the pictorial diagram looks as 'though the offside arm is straight while the nearside has an angle as with David's car.

I asked the club about this a couple of years back - the answer suggested the matter had not received much thought - both arms supplied for the roadster were straight.
R Walker

That would mean the right arm would be a different part number to the left, but that is not the case with any arm in my copy of the Leyland Parts catalogue.

Drawings are just that - sometimes useful for parts positioning and location, sometimes not. Look at the front suspension in the Workshop Manual - AKD3259 15th edition at least - the exploded drawing shows the king-pin outboard of the trunnion pin, the assembly drawing shows it inboard. The latter is correct.
PaulH Solihull

I hope you have better luck with Tex blades than I have. I kept losing and buying new blades (thru Moss) and they never did connect correctly to the arm. I knew something was wrong but never knew what until i finally got a Tex blade that snapped securely to the arm. After comparing the good one vs the bad one, the bad ones had some kind of defect in the connecting mechanism (I think it was the position of the hole). Apparently, there was a bad batch of off-spec blades that went into the market.
JM Morris

And Moss let a bad batch of parts get onto the market!!

I really cannot believe that!

CP
Colin Parkinson

AFAIK there is also a difference in the width of the bayonet fitting.
Dave O'Neill2

This thread was discussed between 11/12/2011 and 05/01/2012

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