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On my '56, I just ran a wire over to one of the shifter circuit breakers. Quick, simple, and took about 12" of wire. And you're right, completely reversible. That is one thing I liked about it, easy, dependable wipers that can go back to original in about 15 minutes. What's not to like?

I for one love my vacuum wipers. They force me to keep my car ventilated because they only swipe once until I reach out the drivers window and push it back to the middle! Just having fun...

BigKev, it's hard to believe you consider your car as just a driver with the great job you are doing on it!

At the beginning of your project, there was a time lapse before you started posting. I'm curious as to whether you had the engine and/or transmission rebuilt or are you "playing it by ear" and cross that road further into your restoration?

When I was a kid, I used to drive grain truck for my Grandpa during the summers around 1992-95. I got to drive the oldest truck, an old 40's GMC, and that old truck had a hand crank (not factory...I hope) you would have to use to wipe the drivers side of the windshield. It was mounted up where the drivers visor should have gone. I hooked up an old hand crank victrola music player assy I found in the shop onto the passenger cab floor, hooked a metal rod to a swivel I mounted on the record plate, the other end hooked up on the the wiper handle and Voila! Instant automatic wipers!

My sensible farmer grandpa didn't see it's value, but admired the engineering.

I didn't mean to take it this far off topic, but hey, its wiper related right?

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I'd like to see that! A Heath Robinson/Rube Goldberg machine! No chance of a pic I suppose?

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I wish. It was genius!

No, I have not had the engine or transmission out of the car. I will cross that bridge when I get to it. Which will be soon as the only thing left to do is the fuel system, then I can actually get the motor running (or not). Once the motor is running, then I will know pretty quickly about the transmission.

Well I decided to get a little bit of work done before my business trip next week to central Jersey. So I thought I would get my rear Speaker switch mounted. So I printed out a copy of the template I drew up. Remove the antenna and headlight switch knobs so I could use the switch shaft to align the template on. Then I marked the location of the '54 Speaker Switch. I was just about to drill the hole for the switch, when something told me to make sure I had all the pieces. Upon this I discovered while I had the correct bezel, knob, and retainer nut. the switch is actually incorrect. The portion of the shaft where the nut screws on is to large. So this switch is not for a '54. Not sure if it was for a previous year, or 55/56. So I will have to call the vendor I got it from and see if I can get a swap out.

While I was working near the dash, I decided to replace some of my pitted dash knobs with the better ones I got from the swap meet. Upon doing the headlight one I noticed that the headlight switch just has a plain bezel instead of the "LIGHTS" embossed bezel. But I have a spare "LIGHTS" bezel in the assortment I got from the swapmeet. I wonder what is correct for '54 CLippers, and what this spare bezel is correct for. The plain bezel I have is does not use a slotted retainer nut, but rather the bezel itself has a threaded center hole and is slotted.

Now that I was thwarted with the wrong switch, I decided to hold of drilling the dash until I could locate the correct one. So with nothing else to do at that moment, I spent some time just wiping down some of the accumulate dust off the car, and putting away some tools.

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Your speaker switch is probably 55-6. That has approx .435 on the overall thread diameter & a slightly odd thread size of 7/16x27. 51-4 is .375 & believe standard 3/8x24 thread.

Howard,

Thanks for that info. If I cant get the this swapped with the vendor, then at least I know what it's for if I flip it out on ebay.

Shaft size will tell you for sure. 55-6 was 3/16 with the groove for the knob locking clip and earlier was approx 1/8 & believe was without groove--just the flat. If you can't find the proper switch, we might be able to come up with a proper nut so you could use that one-as long as the 55-6 knob will match your others.