Wiper motor shaving write up with pics.

I recently had the good furtune of State Farm insurance buying me a new lift gate for my Explorer. A perfect opportunity to shave that rear wiper and squwirter I never use.
Shaving door handles, locks and what have you will all fall under simular procedures. Also there are several ways to go about this task, this is the way I chose.

Here is my new liftgate ready to go.


Here is a close up of the holes I wish to fill. I did not have the time to engineer a way to shave the lock / glass popper. If I had thought of something I would have.



Step one is to measure the holes I wish to cover so I can cut a metal backing. Never use duct tape or any thing like that to back up your body filler no matter how small the hole. Such steps are very unreliable. Remember, measure twice cut once.


Keeping it in the family I cut the backing metal out of my old lift gate. Silver sharpe makes a fantastic marker for doing lay out work like this.


Here is the backing plates grinded down to bare metal on one side only. The scratches are 40 grit and will aid in the adhesion of the backing plate ( more on that soon )


I also roughed up the inside of the lift gate in 40 grit scratches.


Now to attach the backing plate most people would weld the metal plate on. Welding however creates tremendous heat and will warp the metal making for MUCH more body work. The key for that would be using several small cool tac welds and cooling the metal inbetween each tac weld. Very very time consuming. I opted to use a metal bond. Dura-Mix 4178 is a metal bonding adhesive that is used in this trade to glue sheet metal together. I was very skeptical too but have become quite a fan of this product. Let me guarntee you this stuff will hold a quarter pannel in place no problem. I think my backing plate will be a non issue.


I held the backing plates in place with some masking tape and let the dura-mix dry over night. Went home and got some dinner.
This is how it looked from the out side. Note how I cleaned up any dura-mis residue.


The next morning I filed it with some marglass fibergless reinforced body filler. This stuff is thicker and has a bit more substance that normal body filler. Not that the void I was filling was all that huge, but better safe than sorry.


Sand it down with 80 grit. The two little holes that were for the wiper support have just about disapeared.


Hit it with a coat of regualr body filler to get rid of the little voids and imperfections left from the marglass. Sand it down with 80 grit also. **** For more info on working with body filler see my thread Body Work 101 http://www.explorerforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=120559 ****


Fill the whole area with skim coat ( top coat ) to fill in my scratches. Sand that down with 180 grit


Here is the end results of the body work.


Prime


Sand that down with 320 and it is ready for paint.


The final after paint pictures will be posted in this thread at a later date.

Thanks

thats friggin awesome. want to do mine while ur at it?

Good work there, come do mine also.

Might you ever want/need a rear wiper? You can install the hatch glass and wiring from a 2003+ Sport. I have the parts, I just need to begin with the wiring first. Regards,

CDW6212R said:

Good work there, come do mine also.

Might you ever want/need a rear wiper? You can install the hatch glass and wiring from a 2003+ Sport. I have the parts, I just need to begin with the wiring first. Regards,

Click to expand...

I'm actually in the middle of that project for probably about 6 months. The window and wiper have been installed but it can not be easily wired into the older wiring systems and I haven't gotten it to work yet. I may have to wire it from scratch. What approach were you going to take?

The list of things you need to do to mine is growing.

That looks great, can't wait to see the finished product.

Well Brian?, I noticed quickly that the late motors are three wire, just like the 91-94 models. I had already swapped 97 wiring/motor into my 93 hatch to work with my 99 body harness/truck.

That made me look hard at the whole hatch wiring, I decided that it would be easier to change the harness than to try to modify the defrost wiring. Ford keeps moving the ground locations, plus the other input leads.

I bought the hatch and harness for $75 in March. Assuming that I don't change my mind about the harness, the lack of a fourth wire is all that still concerns me. I don't know why the 91-94's had only three, and the 2003+ Sports use the same wiper switch. I don't know what the change is in the models. Let me know if you do learn anything about the wiper motor wiring. Regards,

That is going to look nice-good riddance as far as I'm concerned.
Thanks for the glue tip, I think that will give more people the courage to do this I'll bet.

Do you think this can be done with the liftgate installed?

jtsmith said:

Do you think this can be done with the liftgate installed?

Click to expand...

Absolutely !!!!!!!!
You may get a crick in your neck working over head but other than that.

To do it on a pre existing gate, the only differance would be in the first steps in that you will need to remove the wiper arm and motor
Plug the quirter hose with some scillicon and a golf tee. I would also remove the lock button so you dont hit it wile sanding your body filler.

CDW6212R said:

I bought the hatch and harness for $75 in March. Assuming that I don't change my mind about the harness, the lack of a fourth wire is all that still concerns me. I don't know why the 91-94's had only three, and the 2003+ Sports use the same wiper switch. I don't know what the change is in the models. Let me know if you do learn anything about the wiper motor wiring. Regards,

Click to expand...

The trouble I've been having is with the way the wiper relays are setup on the 4 wire systems I can't get it to deliver the proper signal to get the 3 wire to work.

Here's a thread I started talking about it.

http://www.explorerforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=173153

Well Glen if that adhesive is strong enough, then I'm all for doing that instead of warping the hatch with welding.

I've been thinking of shaving all my wipers since it rains maybe 3 days a year in Arizona.

I did the same on my 96 Limited. But I welded patches in the holes. But I still haven't painted it yet. Have more body work plans

Tim

done and done

Good looking paint!

Kip is the painter, not me.

Pass along the kudos to Kip then, here the man is Kerry. I wish I could afford to give him some work. Night,

Another excellent job & write up Kevin. Man, I wished you lived closer to MI.

damn... thats sexy.
looks like im adding another project to the list.

Awesome...
Hmmm.... the rear wiper is acting pretty stupid these days...

wow great work