Wipers

Looking for a quick weekend project, I pulled out the windshield wiper motors and hardware that's been taking up space on-board for about three years. The weather was nice and it seemed like a good time to put some holes in the boat. My biggest concern was getting a day with very light winds so I could contain all the steel shaving from the drill. Any metal bits that don't get swept or vacuumed up immediately will end up as a little rust stains on the deck, sometimes within 24 hours. To this end, I rigged up a little paper box that I hung under the drill. Hopefully I got it all... We are using pantograph type wiper arms. These use a dual linkage to keep the wiper blade vertical as it sweeps across the glass, providing much better coverage than a standard fan pattern wiper. Each wiper required a 3/4" hole for the motor and a smaller hole to secure the wiper arm baseplate. Their are four angles of sweep that you can set internally on the motor as well as a park function that can be set to put the blade to the left or right when off. Did my best to layout the height above the frame, motor sweep angle, and arm adjustment before drilling the holes. Fortunately (after some complications setting up the first motor) we found everything to be lined up pretty well, with good coverage and no wiper blade contact with the window frames. Kama Hele has a relatively high bow but doesn't really have much flare up forward, so I anticipate we might see a fair mount of salt spray on the wheelhouse windows. I'm eventually going to rig up some plumbing for rinsing the three front windows, with an on off valve at the helm. I had already fabricated a custom panel a while back that has wiper switches, and a defroster fan control. I'll be working on getting this wired up in the next week or so. That will just about do it for the wiring above the helm. I'll then be closing up the overhead with some removable panels trimmed out in matching black laminate to keep the reflections and glare down.