Parts rant!!

[BRAD]

Basically just about everything is going wrong at the moment and today was no exception

I like Machine7 and you can't knock the customer service but I thought as I use my van as a daily pretty much I would replace the wiper arms and blade rubbers before the weather gets bad, so ordered some.

The bloody things nearly pushed me over the edge :evil:
The replacement arms are about 1mm thinner than the OE ones so my OE wipers which I had put new rubbers in pretty much fell out and were actually not useable.

So a simple two minute job turned to s***.

In the end I removed the spring from the M7 ones and put them in the OE ones, which still aren't good as they are pretty loose at the rivet but better than nothing or poor quality parts. In all honesty that is the first time I've had something off them that I thought was total rubbish and I would expect the other suppliers to be the same or worse :lol:

So October has been a bad month VW wise for me and today I figured out I had spent £30 for two springs, can't even be bothered to deal with it, I think I pretty much give up with the usual parts suppliers.

Rant over........... :roll:

 

[Clem]

That's a a pain

In future just get generic rubbers from Halfords and fit in the arms you have.

 

[BRAD]

Yes Clem I did for the wiper blades, but the OE arms were past it, not a lot of tension in the spring pushing onto the screen and the rivets that let them articulate were very sloppy so I thought sod it I would buy some replacements

 

[NickJ]

I bought some black finished arms from JK or Heritage (can't remember) about 3 years ago and they've been great since but I just buy standard blades for them from the local garage.

 

[AxlFoley]

I do tend to think its hit and miss with parts, I have bought good parts from Machine 7 in the past, but also some bad ones. I had what I thought was a good gear linkage bush from Lime bug, that lasted about a month before it fell apart. Actually I haven't complained about that yet!

My tip is to always buy good used genuine parts where possible.

 

[Trikky2]

Had the same problem with play on the shaft/rivets (the ones that allow the wiper blade to pivot away from the screen). Play here causes the wipers to judder on the glass, very annoying. Fortunately the springs were still good.

Ended up making new slightly oversize shafts from some stainless rod because I couldn't find good replacement wiper arms, even though the ones for sale were very expensive.

Sorry I didn't find a better solution for you

 

[Clem]

Yes Clem I did for the wiper blades, but the OE arms were past it, not a lot of tension in the spring pushing onto the screen and the rivets that let them articulate were very sloppy so I thought sod it I would buy some replacements

Ah sorry I see. That's even more crap then. Get some og and sand and repaint is probably the best, as they are the same 69-79 they should be ok to find. I'm sure I gave some

 

[BRAD]

Yeah I will just get round to fixing the rivet or what ever it is as my old ones are OE, I found NOS stock ones from K&K £100 each :shock:

But buy cheap buy twice, NOS is harder to find most things and the prices are reflecting that year upon year.
Top quality pattern parts or even "upgrades" are pretty much unicorn shit.

The judder tricky was one of the things that I was trying to fix yeah, thought it would cheer me up as loads of other things seem to be going wrong at the moment, biggest one is a high pitched squeal from the engine that has gone past pissing me off :evil:
Tomorrow I will replace carb bases gaskets and spacer, I'm praying it is a vacuum leak from there and it will be magically fixed and we'll live happily ever after! :?

 

[vwed]

I have NOS, SWF silver grey arms correct for August '68 to end of July '72 available.

 

[BRAD]

Arms or blades VWED?, Post us up a picture mate.

 

[ozziedog]

Arms I reckon, I`ve got some genuine ones from Ed and they are exactly what they`re supposed to be. Thanks for dropping that arm off for me Ed, I`m getting less and less reliable every year (or more forgetful) :mrgreen:

Ozziedog,,,,,,,,,,,, Feeling my age now :mrgreen:

 

[Trikky2]

Ozziedog,,,,,,,,,,,, Feeling my age now :mrgreen:

That's normal. It's when you feel someone else's age that the trouble starts. :lol:

 

[vwed]

Arms or blades VWED?, Post us up a picture mate.

Arms.
PM sent re photos.