bp71k5
3/4 ton status
My k5 has been pretty fun to be driving the past few months so I haven't cut anything off or broken anything but the weather did require me to replace the wiper blades.
The parts store I frequent recommended a set of some Bosch "evolution" blades for my wifes car the week before and I was impressed by this new blade style. I like it first because it's very quiet compared to the old squeeky ones we always seem to get. The blade is a single piece of extruded rubber that is held onto the wiper arm at a single point. The rubber blade has a built-in flexible arc that allows it to conform to the windshield evenly across the entire blade and not "streak".
Here's a picture of the blade after the install. Notice the lack of extra metal finger arcs at the ends:
New wiper blades sound easy enough right? Not so much.
Evidentally, all new vehicles today use a new style of wiper arm attachment and Bosch only makes them fit this new style. They didn't include any way to snap onto the 40 year old arms that my K5 uses. In a streak of luck (pun intended) the part store had a bucket of custom wiper blade adaptors that they didn't even sell anymore and let me try some out for a while to see if I could get them to work. After an hour or so of trying different ones, I was able to find exactly 2 that worked.
The first piece is a plastic end that snaps onto the existing stock K5 arm like this. There's a hole on the end that is too dark to see clearly:
Then the wiper blade itself has some holes that let you snap these small metal pins in. The visible end of the pin is what snaps into the hole on the end of the wiper arm:
Another problem...the blades come in a minimum length of 16" but the old K5 blades were 15". I was able to flip the blade around so that the longer blade doesn't reach over the top of the windshield when they are wiping. Seems just about right.
And a parting shot of both after installation. These work really well. After using some spray silicon grease on the wiper motor mechanism and adding the new blades, I've eliminated one more annoying noise from the truck. There's still quite a few more to get rid of, but anything helps. Yippee!
The parts store I frequent recommended a set of some Bosch "evolution" blades for my wifes car the week before and I was impressed by this new blade style. I like it first because it's very quiet compared to the old squeeky ones we always seem to get. The blade is a single piece of extruded rubber that is held onto the wiper arm at a single point. The rubber blade has a built-in flexible arc that allows it to conform to the windshield evenly across the entire blade and not "streak".
Here's a picture of the blade after the install. Notice the lack of extra metal finger arcs at the ends:
New wiper blades sound easy enough right? Not so much.
Evidentally, all new vehicles today use a new style of wiper arm attachment and Bosch only makes them fit this new style. They didn't include any way to snap onto the 40 year old arms that my K5 uses. In a streak of luck (pun intended) the part store had a bucket of custom wiper blade adaptors that they didn't even sell anymore and let me try some out for a while to see if I could get them to work. After an hour or so of trying different ones, I was able to find exactly 2 that worked.
The first piece is a plastic end that snaps onto the existing stock K5 arm like this. There's a hole on the end that is too dark to see clearly:
Then the wiper blade itself has some holes that let you snap these small metal pins in. The visible end of the pin is what snaps into the hole on the end of the wiper arm:
Another problem...the blades come in a minimum length of 16" but the old K5 blades were 15". I was able to flip the blade around so that the longer blade doesn't reach over the top of the windshield when they are wiping. Seems just about right.
And a parting shot of both after installation. These work really well. After using some spray silicon grease on the wiper motor mechanism and adding the new blades, I've eliminated one more annoying noise from the truck. There's still quite a few more to get rid of, but anything helps. Yippee!
