HMV Vacuum Windshield WIPERS

Here’s a scenario that may be familiar to many historic-military vehicle (HMV) owners: You’re returning home about dusk after spending a weekend at an HMV show, or returning from a camping trip, in your MB, GPW, M38, M151, M37, M715, G506, or CCKW. The last two days were sunny, but now dark clouds are massing and raindrops begin to spatter your windshield. As daylight fades, the rain increases. The glass in front of you blurs, and you start to lose sight of the road’s center line. You reach up and pull out the little knob on your windshield wiper motor, but instead of vigorous wiper blade action providing you with much needed vision, all you get is a sickly hiss while your wiper blade creeps across the glass at the pace of an arthritic snail. Or maybe, some hissing is all you get, followed by a feeling of panic as approaching headlights seem to swim toward you as if you were underwater.

Maybe you roll your window down and stick your head out or lean around the windshield frame while raindrops sting your face and eyes, preferring to be wet and cold to driving half-blind and risking a head-on collision. Or, you might grab your wiper’s manual handle and flick it to and fro — and continue this juggling act between steering, gear-shifting, and trying to see for the rest of your journey back home.

Or, maybe your wiper works all right on level stretches of highway. But whenever you put your foot on the gas or start to climb a hill, it slows to a creep or stalls out completely.

Mention “vacuum windshield wipers” to most people who still recall when they were standard equipment on most cars and trucks, and you’ll often get colorful adjectives. Discuss vacuum wipers with fellow HMV owners, and you’ll often get the same adjectives, along with opinions to replace them with electric units.

Electric might be one way to clear your vision — assuming you’re not a purist to the point where you’d rather play hide-andseek with oncoming traffic instead of putting non-OEM parts on your vehicle. The conversion to electric, however, can be an expensive move. Before you convert, however, check out your vacuum wiper system. Some simple repairs or replacements might be all you need to see clearly in the rain.

THE BASICS

Wiper system? You might think that’s a grandiose term for those little pot-metal contraptions mounted above, or sometimes below, your vehicle’s windshield. Like most things automotive, there’s a lot more to what makes a vacuum wiper wipe than just what you can see: