There are a few things you can do to upgrade your wipers. If you have an original Thing that is basically a show car, or not a daily driver then by all means stick with the stock glass scrapers. If you actually drive your Thing, you already know the original wipers don’t last and are costly.

Because we are in all kinds of weather, I feel it is a safety issue to be able to see in the snow and rain that sometimes catch us in the backcountry. I have, after two or three experiments, settled upon the 9? long Graneros (made in Brazil) VW # 113-955-425 B. These are smaller and lighter than stock but they have the rippled scraper type rubber blade. They run about $8.00 a pair. To make them fit, you remove your stock blades, then grind down the ends of the wiper arm so it fits into the slot of the new blades, and just screw them down. Another benefit to doing this is you can now use the more expensive Bosch 10? blades if you like.

The wiper motors are getting old, and you may have already noticed they are slowing down, even on high speed. I address this problem by removing the motors, open it up, and change out the hard, stiffened grease that is starting to solidify. This hard grease slows down the action, and puts a little more load on the motor. I put Kendall L-427 super blue grease in ours.

Sometimes the contacts get broken and the blades won’t go into the ‘park’ position. The best way to handle this is to get new contacts from some place like German Motor Works or the Thing Shop. With new contacts and the slightly smaller blades, the wipers pick up speed and do a good job.

One last item – be sure to check the passenger side stem that goes through the windshield. These get corroded and drag the wiper motor down.