Wipers (again...)

[tonycharente]

Please excuse my raising wipers yet again, but as far as I can tell the following query has not been discussed before.
I have a 1969 Elan FHC (RHD with the wipers parking on the left, in front of the passenger). As bought by me many years ago, and also as per the parts manual, it has two different wiper arms - one with a 5? Crank to the right and the other with a 10? Crank to the right.
My question is which side should each wiper arm go? (I've tried it both ways, and each seems to work... ...and the parts manual gives no clue).
All thoughts welcome!
Tony

[denicholls2]

Fools rush in...

Think of a zero offset as having the wiper as a radius of the spindle it attaches to. In order to clear the edge of the windscreen, it has to sit well above the base of it.

Now crank in some angle. This allows the wiper to sit flat near the rubber seal and parallel to the bottom of the screen. But with the same angle, they use up more than the screen width. So, on your RHD, put the 5 degree one (hoping it's 5 degrees counter-clockwise from radius) on the driver's side and the 10 degree one on the passenger side. The driver's side should be pretty well out of the way and the passenger above it and therefore interfering a little (but not much!) with the passenger's view. Which keeps it from falling off the left side of the screen as I see on some Elan pictures I checked.

You can't use the same wipers on LHD as they point in the opposite direction and need to offset opposite to work best. But if you had only those and installed on LHD, you'd do it the same way, they'd just be more annoying to the driver and less to the passenger.

Most of my pictures show two wipers with the same offset. Yours are better than that. This pic (no idea where I stole it but I like the look) has your setup, I think...

[elansprint71]

Well done; most-least understandable (not) post on this forum since 2003. We are now living in Trump world. At least those of you are living in his world are; those of us who are not... are not; maybe.

[tonycharente]

Thank you for your helpful reply, denicholls2.

Having tried both ways round, I had settled on having the 5? crank in front of the driver and the 10? crank in front of the passenger, which is just as you have suggested, so that's very reassuring, thank you.

By the way, it would seem that this handed cranks issue only applies to the later Elans (with their taller windscreens). Photos of earlier Elans often show them with both blades parked pretty well horizonatlly, but this does not seem to be acheivable with S4's/Sprints without losing some key swept area at the other side of the sweep.

Thanks again,
Tony

[Giallo77]

I have a 1969 Elan FHC - LHD with the wipers parking on the left, in front of me - what is normal?

[tonycharente]

I have a 1969 Elan FHC - LHD with the wipers parking on the left, in front of me - what is normal?

If you do a search on "wiper parking" and "wipers parking" you'll find this has been discussed many times, with differing opinions...