If you’ve ever driven a car with vacuum windshield wipers in the rain, you’ll recognize this scenario. As you encounter an incline the wipers slow down, as the incline becomes steeper you step down on the gas pedal, the wipers come to a complete stop, and you’re driving blind. Your only recourse is to lift off the throttle long enough for the wipers to make a couple of passes and restore your vision, then it’s back on the gas to keep from being run over by the cars behind you—and the process begins over.
Back in 1988 Bob Galbraith saw a need for an alternative to vacuum wipers and began making replacement kits with 12V electric motors. Rather than taking a one-universal-kit-fits-all approach, Bob designed complete assemblies for specific years, makes, and models.
Dubbed Clean Wipe Systems, New Port’s wiper conversions include everything needed for installation. Driven by bulletproof OEM motors, wiper drives attach to the stock mounting brackets and come with Nylon bushings to replace the factory rubber grommets in the linkage arms (if necessary).
To complement wiper motor installations New Port Engineering offers a variety of accessories, including stainless wiper arms, wiper blades, intermittent delay switches, washer pumps, washer pump switches, and more.
We’ve used New Port Engineering’s Clean Wipe Systems in a number of cars and have always found them to work perfectly and fit like a factory part. So, when a 1959 Ford with vacuum wipers came into our life the first time we drove it in the rain we knew what we had to do.
At one time it wasn’t uncommon for cars equipped with vacuum wipers to have a source of vacuum other than the engine’s intake manifold. Cadillacs in the ’50s had a vacuum pump driven off the bottom of the oil pump and Trico offered an electric vacuum unit called the Electro-Vac. But the most common source of additional vacuum in those days was a dual-diaphragm fuel pump. Our Ford’s original engine had such a pump; one part delivered fuel to the engine, while a separate portion (along with manifold vacuum) operated the windshield wiper motor.
Even with a dual diaphragm fuel pump vacuum wipers were marginal at best, and in our particular case a lumpy cammed, dual-quad equipped 429 fed by an electric fuel pump is in the engine bay so there was no source of suction other than the intake manifold. Couple that with a worn-out wiper motor and it was time to update.
We ordered a wiper system from New Port Engineering with the optional delay switch—we then spent a few hours on a sunny afternoon installing it. The mounting bracket fit perfectly as did the linkage and other than finding an accessory terminal on the ignition switch the wiring is plug-and-play. In operation the sweep of the wiper blades is the same as original, and we’ve really come to appreciate the intermittent function. With the new electric wipers we can drive with confidence when the skies open up, it’s the benefit of having wipers that don’t suck.
New Port Engineering offers electric windshield wiper conversions for a variety of cars and trucks. This example is for 1959 Ford cars.
This is the original vacuum windshield wiper motor. Not only was it tired, somewhere along the line it was treated to a coat of rattle can flat black.
The original wiper motor was removed along with the mounting bracket that attached to the firewall.
There are only two fasteners holding the wiper motor bracket to the firewall. The motor’s linkage fits through the rectangular hole.
This is the original cable control for the vacuum motor. It’s removed and discarded.
We opted for the intermittent wiper delay switch. It can also operate a windshield washer pump.
New Port Engineering’s motor simply bolts in place using the original holes.
On the passenger compartment side of the firewall the original linkage arms are equipped with replacement bushings, attached to the motor and secured with C-clips.
The new washer switch replaces the original. The stock knob wiper knob had been damaged—the plans are to find a replacement.
