Windshield Wiper Arm Repair With a J Adapter

Monday November 21, 2022 Guerneville CA.

Wiper adapters

My old van has older bayonet type wiper arms and they are getting real hard to find replacement wipers for them these days. They’ve stopped putting the adapter for them in the wiper boxes.

It seems most every time I buy some new wipers that I think might fit, they won’t as there’s no adapters in the box for them and I waste a lot of time trying to find what I need.

I’d noticed my old Subaru has some J adapters on it’s wiper arms, so I did some research, hoping to replace the ones on my van.

So I did my research and found what I hope will work to make my system into a J type which seems to be one of the more popular ones being used today.

Today project

The project for today is to get the new adapters screwed onto the wiper arms so I can use the J type replacement blades.

I got the tools out and the van setup to start the job.

I’ll be working on these two wiper arms.

Old arm type

This is the old type wiper arm I have that I think they call a bayonet type.

Adapter kit

This is the adapter kit I bought for the job. It didn’t come with any instructions at all, so I had to figure it out and I couldn’t find anything online that would help much.

I marked the wiper arm for drilling the holes and got the holes drilled and ready for tapping new treads in them.

Tapping threads

I rounded up a tap set and tapped the two holes out for the screws. I tried to use use a screw to thread the piece, but found the wiper arm too hard to make threads so that’s why the tap.

I screwed the new J adapter onto the wiper arm.

The adapter was nice and solid once the two screws were screwed in.

I had a pair of wiper replacements that I’d bought at Costco a few weeks ago that I found wouldn’t fit the old arm, but now they will fit the new J arm. I mounted that one up fairly easily now.

I did the other one the same way and got the wipers all adjusted and fixed up. My hope is that will make my life easier to keep good wipers on the van now.

I finished up just about the time the sun went behind the hills to my west.

Nice day.