WIPER MOTOR & ARM

WIPER MOTOR

note the area marked above left in pen which needs to be cut to enable easier fitting-as shown far right after removal

The wiper motor can obviously be bought from Lamborghini but as with most original parts, at around £600 it's not cheap. Thus, if a viable option can be found it gets used. Naz advised that he had used a Citroen BX motor (of say 1990 vintage) in the past with good results, so that was the way I decided to go. The Citroen is one of the few cars on the road that used a single wiper so the setup was fairly close to start with. some of the later Jags and Mercs used (and still do) a single wiper assembly, but their elliptical operation makes them unsuitable. Lamborghini decided to use a regular, non-elliptical sweep but instead used a pantograph wiper arm which alters the wiper angle as it travels up the screen to prevent the end of the arm from going off the edge. I guess you could use an eliptical system but it would mean you couldn't use a pantograph arm which is something of a trademark (and a very visual one at that) for Lamborghini. As a note, you won't get away with using a non-pantograph/non-elliptical single wiper system. The shape of the screen just won't allow it. You will either go off the edge of the screen or not clear enough area to pass the SVA. You have been warned.

The motor assembly itself can be bought new but again there really is no need if you can get a second-hand one. I have Andrew in Cornwall (listed in links page) to thank for finding mine. Most grateful. And no, he's not going to go out and get covered in crap to find more secondhand parts for other builders....

The BX motor has also got the correct tapered spindle size to go straight onto the Lambo wiper arm, rather than the more common 5/8" pinch-bolt arrangement used on most other arms. The wiring colours will also be different to the loom that Parallel supplies but Naz gave me the colour coding to match up, as well as two plugs to fit onto my loom and the motor. It's likely that in the future Naz will actually supply the plugs already on the looms to make it even easier. My loom was supplied bare as it was one of the first customer units and it's fair to say that although pretty comprehensive there was little things like this which weren't finalised. Also, I am fairly sure that the length of the sweep is changed as the Citroen goes from one side of the screen to the other, which the Lambo doesn't do. Again, Parallel can do this if required. I'm not sure exactly what is done as they did mine when they re-bushed it.

Most of the used motors will be very badly worn by now, but Parallel can offer a full rebuild service which will bring them up to perfect working order. In terms of fitting it to the car, unfortunately this won't be a 'plug n play' scenario. It would be much better if Parallel supplied the chassis with all the mountings pre-welded, as well as the wiper hole and slot pre-cut in the body, but their argument is that this would restrict the options available to the builder. My view is that theres not an awful lot of options available anyway, and if some mug really did want to fit £1,500.00 quids worth of genuine Lambo motor and arm, or spend ages frigging around with unknowns such as elliptical systems then I would have thought that they could be asked this at point of sale and their chassis/body could be supplied 'virgin'. Simple.

Anyway, the first thing to do is bore the hole in the body for the wiper spindle to poke through. This must be a 35mm hole and I was advised by Naz that it would be better if the hole was offset, so that the edge of the hole actually protudes past the edge of the body. This is apparantly due to the fact that the Citroen motor assembly is bigger than the Lamborghini one, and having it offset means that you will have far less trouble mounting it due to clearance problems. Once the hole is bored, a slot needs to be cut in the area at the bottom of the windscreen recess to allow the aluminum casting of the motor assembly to fit correctly. Rather than try and describe the hole and slot procedure, it is easier to look at the pictures. The real pain is that there is nothing at all to mount the wiper motor to. You will need to fabricate some brackets from something- I used 25x4mm steel strip. I bent the strip as necessary to go to two points on the motor assembly which is fine combined with the support given by the big nut that goes over the spindle. The mounts I made went to the front chassis rail that is directly in front of the heater blower box and the other one to the same chassis rail that has the front boot hinge bolted to it. Again pics show better than words.

Below is a pic of the dimensions I cut for the spindle hole and the body of the wiper motor. These dimensions are exactly the same as used on Parallel's own demonstrator. NOTE: There is one measurement that I left off the picture below by mistake- the distance that the centre of the spindle hole has been offset from the edge of the mounting face. The figure is 10mm.

Above left: front support bracket. Note proximty of wiper motor to brake reservoir cap. Above right: side bracket. Mounting point on the chassis is the same one used for the front boot hinge. Note that the hinge is not fitted for this picture for clarity.

The worst aspect of the wiper scenario is that theres no way the brake reservoir cap can be removed once the wiper motor is in. The cap is literally one millimetre from the motor. I wasn't sure that this was correct so I rang Parallel and their response was that this was indeed what happens. Not good. I took their point about the fact that once a system is bled and the reservoir is topped up you shouldn't really need to go near it again until a fluid change. I accept this but it doesn't make me feel any better. The simple fact is that if I want to top up/change the brake fluid on my car the only way to do it is to remove the wiper motor. This wouldn't be so much of a problem (hell, you only need to change fluid every 3 years or so anyway) if it wasn't for the fact that the motor is sealed to the body in the area that you cut for the wiper motor housing. OK, you can remove the sealing and redo it but it's hardly ideal. It would be far easier to find some way of drilling the plastic reservoir and fitting say an 8mm male union which you can then attach a pipe to for filling up. When not being used, an 8mm rubber blanking cap could be fitted which would be airtight. My only reservation for doing this is how I would prevent any plastic from drilling and tapping the hole from entering the reservoir. Even a tiny piece could block the small passages in the hydraulic cylinder. I'll have a think on it....

WIPER ARM

Unfortunately, the wiper arm is one part that you just don't have an option on. The pantograph system is not used (as far as I know) by any other manufacturer and so you need to take a stiff drink, bite the bullet, load your wallet and buy genuine. Scary. When I spoke to Naz about this, he said he could offer me either the 'regular' Diablo 2 blade wiper arm for £350 or the proper 'SV' arm which is 3 blade and comes with carbon fibre wind deflectors for £900. Yes. Hundreds of pounds for a wiper arm when most cars cost about 15 quid from Halfords. And you don't even get the wiper blades with the Lambo ones.

I'd much, much prefer the 3 blade not because it would make my car look more like the 'SV' that it is supposed to be a copy of, but because it just looks so much more purposeful. The Lambo wiper system has always been visually 'in your face' and the 3 blade does just that. However, I nearly fell over at paying 300 quid for a wiper arm, let alone 900 so the 2 blade it had to be. UPDATE: I have swopped my 2 blade with Naz and managed to get the genuine 3 blade at a very good (read: unprinatable) price. Very chuffed!

 
above left: my genuine 2 blade arm (no blades fitted).....above right: genuine 3 blade SV arm as fitted to Parallel's demonstrator

below left: my new 3 blade......below right: close up of 3 blade

Once the motor is mounted and you've applied some power to it to check the operation and make sure that the moving arm does not foul anything, you can proceed to trial-fit the wiper arm. If you have the wiring loom fitted and powered up, you can 'park' the motor to get your base alignment. I didn't have my loom fitted, so I had to supply power to the motor and cut it when the spindle reached the end of it's movement. This took a few tries but once I was happy I'd got it just right I offered up the wiper arm to what I thought was an average height from the base of the screen, going by what I had seen on other Diablos. I then tightened the nut down just enough to hold the arm tight and after pulling the blade up (you won't be able to let the arm sweep the screen at this stage because you will not have the pantograph spindle located), powered the motor up to see where the blades would end up on the other end of the sweep. Again, this takes a few tries as you need to cut the power to the motor just as the sweep is at it's max travel. I found that the blade was not going accross the screen far enough, so I had to 'park' the motor again, remove the arm and refit at a slightly higher angle. In the end I found that I had to remove the arm about 4 or 5 times before I had the right sweep. I ended up with the max sweep leaving the blades parallel to the offside edge of the screen, and about 5 mm from the edge of the black inside screen surround. This setup also left the arm in an acceptable park position, not too far up the screen as I have seen many other kits do. Top marks to Naz for getting the modified sweep angle just right.

Now that the sweep has been checked you can move on to locating the spindle for the pantograph arm. This is a somewhat scary task as you will be drilling into the body and you won't get a lot of tries at getting it right. In fact, you only really get one try, and you need to be within .5mm. Because you have such a small margin for error, once the 6mm hole is drilled you will be unable to re-do it unless a: you were miles out to start with or b: you make good any holes you make by filling with fibreglass and starting all over again.

I actually got my hole wrong...... not because my pilot mark was in the wrong place, but because I drilled through the big black plastic nut and it undone slightly before I got through to the fibreglass body underneath. I didn't realise and carried on drilling....

By nothing other than extreme luck the hole was far enough out for me to get away with drilling another without breaking into the original hole. A right result as they say. After tightening the big black plastic nut a full turn more I could push the pantograph spindle through it and then into the body (a snug fit). A final check of the arm sweep, now with the blade actually on the screen, showed it to be perfect. The only thing I will do is buy another black nut as the one I had was from the original Citroen and when I drilled through it cracked a little.

To prevent the spindle from pulling out you use the circlip on the end. Because different bodies will have different thicknesses of fibreglass you may need to either grind the body down a little if it's too thick or space the spindle with washers if it's too thin. I'm not entirely happy about running the spindle in the fibreglass hole due to wear concerns so I will keep my eye on it. If it looks like the hole is wearing the only option will be to make up a 6mm i.d metal sleeve and press that into the body instead. Hopefully my wiper arm will not be doing much work though.....it will bring me down if I need to drive the car in the rain....

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