Upgrading Your 1980-86 F-150 Wiper System: A DIY Guide

hi folks Ed here welcome back to Bullnose Garage and today I have a question for you what do this wiper motor this washer pump and this wiper washer switch all have in common they’re garbage and it runs for just a second and it turns off and it’s really inconsistent making those clicking noises that’s actually a way for you to know that there’s something going on with your motor if that module clicks like that all right so clearly that stuff is garbage today I’m going to replace all three of those things on my bullnose truck right here and I’m going to show you how to do it on yours the easiest is probably the washer fluid pump which is just a basically you pull out the old one and pop in the new one then we’ve got the wiper motor and that wiper motor is a little bit tricky cuz if you buy one from Amazon it uh seems like a direct replacement but it’s not quite you got to do some modification to it to make work and I’ll show you exactly how I did that to mine so you can do it to yours and finally a great upgrade is one that I did on the interior for the uh wiper and washer switch and I changed it from the old high low style to an intermittent style which is a really great modern upgrade for these old trucks so stick around and I’ll show you how to do all of that today hello let’s take a look and see all the bits and pieces that make this system work so first of all we’ve got your uh wiper motor right there that uh links to the wiper arms there and there and there’s only one motor for both uh there’s a linkage back there that controls them uh there we’ve got our sprayer nozzle on the 85 F150 there’s only one and then the line obviously comes down and goes to the reservoir which I’ve already got emptied you can see here down there that is the uh fluid pump and it just uh hooks up right there and pretty easy to replace so what I’m going to do is I’m actually going to take the entire Reservoir out get it good and clean uh it’s pretty gross in there and then uh go through and start doing the replacement I think the hardest part of this is going to be hooking up the motor and uh getting the cowl off so there’s several Phillips screws that you can see there that you got to take off to get this cowl off so first things first we got to get this cowl off and it’s not too difficult but there are a few steps you’ve got to know uh before you can just go ahead and pop it off of here so the first one I’m going to do is take off these wiper arms to do that get a screwdriver underneath this little bit there pull that up pop that out set that back down like that and now you can just wiggle it off of here get my screwdriver out of my hand so I can use both hands here there we go and this side will obviously be a little bit more difficult just cuz it’s uh you got to reach further but it’s the same idea pop that out set that down wiggle wiggle wiggle wiggle wiggle wiggle oh it’s so hot wiggle something loose that ain’t been wiggle loose in 20 years wiggle wiggle wiggle there it goes almost took you guys out okay now we’ve also got these screws here to remove and we have to take off the anten mount anten mount’s pretty simple try to get under here and pop it off you can see this is already a little bit loose I’ve already taken the screws loose from underneath there we go oh that puppy’s already loose and then you just uh unplug it me let loose here there he goes there are several Phillips screws under here for the cowl and you just have to kind of go and take them out some somebody put a different screw in that one got a little following behind somebody else’s work all right here we go handy dandy correct tool for the job there’s some damage going on there so I’ll to be honest here and say I don’t know how this came from the factory but this truck is been around the block a few times so whoever had it before me has done some stuff to it and there’s some zip ties and some other stuff in here so I’m going to have to cut that off so that I can start working on uh getting the cowl off and uh replacing these lines take care of your truck you have to pull it from underneath the uh the trim here I’m a onean show so I got to do it myself I said this before guys I will say it again I am playing the learn as we go game I have watched videos on this and done a lot of research but I’ve never actually taken the cow off myself it takes some real wiggling and if you don’t want to scratch the paint on your cowl guys you have to be more careful than me I don’t know that I care that much about my paint cuz I’m going to repaint all this anyway but that’s going to be a real pain to get back on there without scratching the paint when I do it later you may take your hood off if you want to do it without scratching the paint for sure okay guys this is the ever popular 10 mm and this should be the only thing holding this Reservoir on and there we go we want to take this locking ring out and then just pulls right out of there okay guys so when I pulled mine out of here the uh the pump came out but the impeller and Gasket is still stuck in there so I got to figure out how to get that out of there uh but you know I got a pick set that I think I can get in there and uh yoink that out with all right guys here we are like a one week later I think I discovered that my wiper switch uh right there is actually faulty I think that’s what’s causing both the wiper motor and the uh the washer uh pump to not work correctly so I went out and got a replacement actually I got an upgrade so this is an intermittent wiper module uh my truck doesn’t have one from the factory so I’m going to go ahead and uh while I’m doing this add intermittent wipers so uh this whole setup is about 80 bucks from eBay uh that’s about the only place you can find them they got to pull them from another truck somewhere so uh but this one looks like it’s in pretty good shape and uh yeah let’s see how it works so to get to uh where this switch is so I can replace it you got to take both of these knobs off off uh my wiper switch knob has been broken for a long time so it just pops right off uh my light headlight switch though is actually still uh got good retention here so you have to find this little Notch uh that’s right there slide a tool back in there behind there like a hook and compress a ring back in here that’ll pop this off once those are off uh then you can come underneath here and I’m not sure if you can see or not there are uh a few Phillips head screwdriver or screws screwdriver a few Phillips head screws right there uh that’ll help you get this Dash panel off um and in my case I’ll probably have to move my tack cuz it’s after market uh sometimes you’ve got to remove this uh steering wheel uh shaft shroud right here but we’re going to see if we can do it without without that mine’s a little bit more complicated cuz I got some extra stuff there we go or to really get it out of the way in a future episode I will be doing this here part again because I have a new um gauge cluster that came out of a different truck and it’s got a tack built in and I really really want the factory tack so that’s why I grabbed that I’ve had it for a couple of years and haven’t put it in yet that’s the story of my life all right and now you just kind of rotate that out of the way all you got to do is get to this all right guys now I’m not sure how well you can see what I’m doing here but I’ve got a bunch of aftermarket goop and stuff up under here that has been added by somebody else so it’s probably going to be a little bit harder for me to get to this and do this than it would be for you guys but here is the old switch it’s just got a plug here so we take that plug out and we get our new one now the new one obviously has a lot more stuff and there’s some considerations you got to have here now the new one should just plug right into the same socket as the old one should it’s pretty rough but they are I mean they are going in there there’s no doubt they’re going in it may just be oh yeah that’s what it is I don’t know if you guys can see that or not but the the uh length isn’t the same on the housing so it’s not going to go in all the way that right there is as far as it’ll go so there we go all right I’ve also got to find a place to stick this ground so there should be plenty of places under here uh I just got to find a good one oh man my hood releas is bust maybe I should fix that while I’m down here it’s always something yeah that’s going to work this guys this is why you never throw any screws or nuts away and if you happen to go to a garage stale or an estate stale where they got buckets of this stuff you may want to pick it up all right now that solves two birds two birds that solves two problems now I got to find a place to tuck this thing yeah all right guys um so I I’m continuing to troubleshoot this um let me turn it on for you okay now if I touch this I’m not sure you can hear it but that works but now you hear that noise let going from this box so either I got a bad box from eBay or what I think is more likely is that my wiper motor is actually not not working correctly um so I I bought a new motor and anticipation of this I thought it was a motor originally so now my line of thinking is probably that the motor is actually what caused my original switch to to go out so uh I’m going to replace the motor and we’re going to try again so before I go through all the work of replacing the motor and going through all the linkages and everything I’m going to test the new one uh plugged into the truck so hopefully this solves the problem because if it doesn’t uh then I don’t know what it would be other than this box being bad so here’s the pump working try that what am I missing here all right guys here we are a couple of weeks later I’m sorry about that family obligations and such uh but I’ve got another day to work on the truck today and uh did some research while I was out and uh I think I got my my problem figured out I think I didn’t have a good ground I think is what’s going on you have to make sure you have good grounds when you’re doing this stuff um or else you can cause all kinds of issues and uh right now as you can see I’ve got a good ground I know for sure that this right here is a good ground I got a couple alligator clips here going to the ground stud on this old motor which is plugged in and if I try to turn it nothing happens and as a matter of fact the little module under here I don’t know if you can hear it or not making those clicking noises that’s actually a way for you to know that there’s something going on with your motor if that module clicks like that so if I get in here and remove this plug and come down here to my new motor plug it in get the ground strap hooked up correctly and now there we go slow fast and intermittent one thing that I didn’t know because I’ never had intermittent on this truck before uh right here is actually in the middle of the uh uh the movement of this if I turn it to the left this rotation here is what causes the intermittent to happen and the further you rotate it right is uh how it goes faster and then right here this next click that’s off and the next click to the right is slow and the next click to the right is fast and I didn’t know that’s how that works so last time I was a little bit confused as to why you know I didn’t know how it turned on how it turned off I was having it turned all the way to the left thinking maybe if I had it turned all the way to the left that it wouldn’t go at all but all this is is the slowest intermittent setting when it’s all the way to the left like that so yep and that was explaining why this box down here was making all kinds of weird clicking noises and stuff um if the motor doesn’t run correctly this box will do all kinds of weird clicking and everything uh but it’s actually a great indicator of uh of an issue so what that means is that now both my wiper motor and my uh wiper fluid pump are good to go so there’s also this little CI kind of thing here and mine’s in pretty rough shape so I’m going to take it off here and give it a quick once over and evaluate it and see what I want to do with it now let’s see if that comes off looks like there’s also some sealant stuff under here so yeah all right there we go yeah you can see how rough that piece is under there I may want to paint that clean it up paint it before I put it back on all right now there’s a linkage back there that connects the motor to the uh the arms underneath here where the wiper goes there you go that’s it yeah so I got to figure out how to disconnect all that all right guys I’m not sure how well you can see this clip right here that’s what’s holding everything on and so I think what I’ve got to do is get a screwdriver in this little part right here pop this part open this way then move the whole thing off passenger side goes in front driver side goes in the back and there is the clip so let’s take a look at these and see if they are indeed different okay so here’s the old one and here is the new one and take a look yeah yeah they are different yeah the old one’s got a much longer pin so I’m not sure if I’m guessing I’m going to take that whole entire arm off cuz those arms look like they’re they’re about the same uh in terms of length and uh jog right there so I think I just take this there’s a there’s a a bolt there a bolt here I’ll take those arms off and swap them and that should hopefully should take care of it okay quick update for you guys uh I got them both off they are index the same um so if you look they have the same kind of uh holes although they aren’t they don’t have the same Return To Zero location and they are actually a little bit longer but I think oh you know what what I’m doing I got them back to back that’s the that’s why they oh yeah but they’re still they’re backwards right right hm not sure how that’s going to work have to put it in and try it um the other thing that I noticed also is that uh the hole on this one is a little bit smaller than the hole on this one so I may have to file out the inside of this just a little bit to get it to fit on the on the uh Mount pin over there all right well it took some filing and I had to use some torque to get it on there but the old arm is and pin are now on the new motor so let’s get this in the truck and zeroed I’m going to plug it back in I cuz I when I was trying to get this on here um it moved the motor a little bit so I want to get this back in hooked up real quick set it back to zero and then uh I can get it mounted back up so another thing I want to try to do is reuse this ground strap right here it’s uh got this fitting here that goes in that should give me a good solid ground to the body of the truck um and it’s nice and short doesn’t get in the way so hopefully we can reuse it I’m not going to tighten this until I’ve got the mounting done in the back so I can see what this it look like all right that actually looks right all right all right guys I apologize if you missed a little bit uh my phone died on me while it was uh in the middle of putting my wipers on I think it got too hot for the phone out here even in September it’s like 93° outside in New Mexico anyway future editor Ed note here don’t make the same mistake I made and put your wipers on before you put your cowl back on because I had to take those wipers back off again to put the cowl on yeah that was a pain clip uh that Clips down and holds them in place you just have to make sure that uh you get them in the right spot when you put them back on so that they they wipe correctly uh but the the motor goes back to zero automatically and so you just wait for it to go back to zero and then you put the wipers where they belong all right guys so here’s the deal this right here is the old uh sprayer and it’s a dual head so well it’s a single head but it’s dual uh dual sprays okay that’s what came with the truck the kit that I got from Amazon are two single sprays and so if I wanted to use these I could either uh just do a single spray point it toward the driver’s side keep it in the same location and go from there or I could actually drill holes in the cowl on either side and then pop these into the new holes and then run the lines and have a dual spray set up if I wanted to um but I’m going to be honest with you guys and and I think I blew some air through this uh it’s fine and I will tell you this old hose is way better than this new uh hose I got from Amazon I mean it’s just way thicker and it’s still uh in pretty good shape it’s it’s Supple for being uh from 85 if it’s original it may not be I don’t know but uh yeah it’s still in really great shape so I’m just going to keep the old hose and I’m actually going to keep the old sprayer nozzle too because I think uh it’s going to be just fine I think it was just the pump that was the problem uh then I’ll keep this for a spare if I need to but I’ll tell you that the quality of this is nowhere near as good as the quality of what came on the truck and I’ve been learning as I’ve been doing this that that happens quite a lot uh the new stuff that you can buy from Amazon just isn’t as good a quality you know for a long time I was thinking that uh you know if you’re going to replace systems in an old vehicle like this that you probably ought to go through and just replace the entire system with new stuff uh cuz it’ll be better brand new but but the longer I do this the more I go through it the less I think that’s true I think you may be better off keeping some of the old stuff on there because I think it’s just better quality especially the older stuff from like the you know uh prior to the the ’90s and the 2000s uh when a lot of this manufacturing started getting moved over to China now no dig against China well maybe a little dig against chn but generally the newer stuff is not as high quality so there you go take that for what’s worth the the amount for the nozzle is actually on the cowl I can’t Mount that nozzle until I get the cowl back on the truck but I do want to paint this piece first it’s pretty uh pretty rough and uh it doesn’t look nice so while I’ve got it off and I’ve got the opportunity I’m just going to go ahead and clean it up and hit it with uh some bed liner actually some sprayon Rustoleum bed liner that I’ve got um I don’t actually use that for bed lining cuz I don’t think it’s tough enough for that but it is tougher than regular spray paint so uh I’ll hit this with that and that way it’ll be nice and clean and look nice and I’ll put that back on there but before I go through all that I’m actually going to test the nozzle real quick for you guys and go hey look at that beautiful all right here we are the next day and here’s the piece all painted up just uh cleaned it up hit it with a primer hit it with uh uh the rustolium bed liner and then a real quick top clear coat satin finish and uh it should last a long time the cow is tricky especially for just one person and I’m fortunate in that my paint’s not in great shape anyway so if I scratch something up or or uh ruin quote unquote ruin the paint it’s not as big of a deal if I had just got done painting this thing I’d be much much more careful obv obviously why would that not work what’s going on there is there a kink somewhere okay so even though I tested it before with the with it out of the truck and it worked fine now when I’ve got it back in the truck only one side’s working and it’s not working great so hooking That Thing Up and unhook it it’s a real pain in the ass because uh you have to get underneath the cowl and uh try to hook that that hose up to uh the the spray head so what I’ve done is I’ve uh made this little extend and that way when I plug this in it should hang below the cowl and I can actually plug and unplug it down there what have to reach up into the cow to get that done let’s see if uh that works out for me okay well this hose is not the same size I don’t know if I can get that on here or not let’s see almost come on need to go down there good and tight almost there hey look at that all right yeah that’s not going anywhere good oh that side’s blocked so something got in there either got in a hose or when I was uh working on the uh pump there something piece of debris or something got in there and now it’s jammed up inside here okay nope still nothing there there we go all right we got air coming from both holes now good good oh now let’s see if this fitting is going to be big enough for this hose it may not be oh no oh you know what though I think I can make it work maybe we’re going to find out and then when I’m driving down the road later and it all goes to hell I know who to blame just myself as always where’ my hose go there it is that feels like success to me and now if I ever have to mess with that thing there my connection is beneath the cowl inside the hood of the inside the uh the engine bay so as long as it doesn’t come unconnected get up there toward the top where I can’t get to it yeah you know even if it does that new hose is thin enough it’ll actually go through the hole in the cowl which is the problem with the hose that came with the truck it’s too thick to go through uh that ho that hole in the cowl so yeah yeah I’m happy with that I’m going to go inside and button up the inside of the truck I’m not going to bore you guys with that uh it’s pretty simple just putting things back together in there so I think I think we’re done hopefully you learned something today um I know when I went out to look in how to do this there were some videos but nothing quite this in depth so I’m hoping that uh that uh you know you learned something and that maybe this can help you do your own thing especially when it comes to swapping out that motor um and changing the arm around uh I read on Amazon where I bought this thing I’ll put the link in the description for it where um you had to do some modifications but the the the descriptions weren’t real specific as to what modifications you had to do it was most just folks complaining about the fact you had to do a modification so at least now you guys know exactly what sorts of modifications you you got to do you swap that uh the arm around on the back of the motor there you have to I had to file the motor itself uh the mount point on the motor I decided to file the mount point of the motor rather than the arm because that arm uh is original to the truck and I have no idea how I would get a replacement for that um whereas that motor was fairly cheap on Amazon so if I screw it up well okay I use another motor so uh yeah I filed the the mount point on the motor and then got it down to where it was it was almost there and then I used the uh uh the bolt on the back to sort of torque that down and and seat everything real good and it seemed to work just fine got the clip and everything on there uh it went back to zero in the right spot just get your wipers back on and uh good to go there as far as replacing the the water pump or not the water pump I’m sorry the uh the washer pump Ah that’s that’s pretty simple uh there’s not a whole lot to that so uh yeah you just pull the old one out put the new one in and if that’s your only problem that’s like a 5 minute fix there’s nothing to that so yeah again guys hope you learned something if you did please give me a like And subscribe I really appreciate that help out uh helps me out a lot I i’ think I’ll get a hat but I’m not wearing mine today cuz I don’t want to get it messed up uh this is my working on the truck hat so uh anyway thanks again so much for watching guys we will see you next time fine take a r away getting things to shine she’s considered Divine thanks again for watching we will see you next time thanks again for watching we’ll see you next time