I am planning on changing out the single vacuum wiper to 12v dual electric wipers. I bought a wiper kit from SAC-vintage ford. According to instructions the dash supports to the cowl will have to be removed and replaced with the supports supplied with kit. Has anyone done this conversion and how did it work out.

Thanks

 

TLB,

Everything I got from SVF (and that's ALOT of stuff, BTW!) fit very well, so I'm sure their 12v electric wiper conversion is no exception. Their tech dept is spot-on as well, in case you have problems with the install. Very helpful and patient.

Sidebar: Beautiful F-1. Any chance of getting more pix posted in your gallery? From the one view, those bed rails look great! Let's see a 360 photo shoot + under hood pic, eh?

Best,
Butch n Me

 

Terry,

Haven't done it, but thought about it a lot. There isn't a whole lot of room under there to work with electric wipers, so I'd be interested in just what modifications have to be made. I have a stock vacuum motor with the linkage going to the passenger side right now, but I know nothing about the working order of the motor and won't know until I get the truck running. I couldn't even adapt a 51-52 linkage to mine because of the dash supports under there so I carved up the 51-52 linkage to make my 48-50 linkage work. I just didn't feel comfortable cutting the dash supports out. I guess the 51-52 supports were different to enable that wiper linkage to fit.

Vern

 

Vintique makes an electric motor that replaces the vacuum motor pretty easy. It's about $120 from Speedway motors. I had one and liked it. I have another one now on a '51 wiper assy. workd good.

 

Dong,

Is the electric motor from Speedway for a 48-50 and do you use the stock 48-50 wiper linkage, or do you have to cut the dash supports out and use 51-52 type linkage?

Vern

 

You cut it up!!

 

If it is a motor for 48-50, you have to cut and flatten a small part of the defroster duct and bolt it where the vacuum motor was. If it is a motor for 51-52 then you have to use the linkage for 51- 52 and cut the braces from the top of dash (by the defroster ducts) to the bottom of dash out.
If you put in the 51-52 linkage and motor, a stock radio will not fit. That's why the 51-52 had the radio in the bottom of the dash.

 

Nathan,

It was either cut up the linkage or cut up my truck...and I decided on the linkage. The 51-52 linkage won't fit a 48-50 unless you cut the dash supports out. I probably should have cut the supports out. Sorry...you got anything else you can send me to cut up?

Vern

 

I am planning on mounting wiper kit tomorrow. I am giong to cut out dash supports and use the ones that came with the kit. Will let you all know how things go. Should learn some new cuss words before it's finished.I am also in the middle of rewiring the entire truck. New gauges switches etc. The main reason i went with the wiper kit that i did was for the dual wipers. I only had one wiper and no linkage to passenger side of truck. Wife complained(big suprise there)she could not see out when raining. Its also a lot easier to do with the dash gutted.

 

Terry,

It should go okay. Once you get those dash supports out of there you will have plenty of room. I just didn't want to cut mine out at the time because I didn't know 51-52 cabs didn't have them. If I had known that I would have used the 51-52 linkage that Nathan sold me as is. Now that I know the supports have to be removed I may just cut mine out while I have access to them and then I could add the kit later (when I find out my vacuum motor is no good or my engine won't create enough vacuum to run them).....

Vern

 

Not an expert by any stretch of the imagination, but out of despairation here is what I came up with. Went to the closest salvage yard and looked over their pile of wiper motors. The one that looked closest to my 1955 F-600 was from an older Toyota Camray. Gave the guy his $10.00 and took it home. One simple modification to the bracket (drilled one extra mounting bolt hole) and it fit right in and works like a dream. Got a new 2 speed switch from NAPA. Nice having reliable wipers!

 

Got wipers in today. Cut out dash supports. Wasn't to difficult just took some time. Also had to cut out part of vaccum motor support. Won't know how they work until i get truck wiring done.

 

Hooked up wipers to battery today to see if they worked. I put the battery back in an hooked wire with inline fuse to battery connection on starter relay mounted on firewall. Wipers ran for about 1 min. then blew the fuse. Would there be to much voltage hooking up this way that caused fuse to blow?

 

I would suspect that all may be ok and the fuse was too small, these units draw a lot of amp. Check the paper work and try again. Ed ke6bnl

 

The fuse is the one supplied with wipers. Instructions does not say what size fuse nor can i read it on the fuse itself. I thought about this last night and what i think is the brackets may need relocated a little. They may be putting a bind on the motor bracket and causing motor to run harder and trying to draw more amps than required. When i get a chance i will loosen the brackets and try again.

Thanks for the input.

Terry