I go the bushings installed with a 18mm socket, masking tape, & a vise. Got everything bolted back up & noticed the wiper blades are wiping back toward the cowl instead of the windshield.
Any recommendations as to what I did wrong? Thanks!

 

Got the arm on the motor turned the wrong way. 180* off and it'll park high. So if you put the blades on with the cowl, it goes down and up, not up and down.

Have an arm in the wiper transmission mispositioned. Like the front arm in the back. But that normally causes it to bind up.

There's not much that can go wrong.

I'd bet on the arm; take it loose, run the motor through a cycle, and with a wiper down, put the arm back on and snug the nut down. Cycle it part way back up (because, IIRC, the arm points to the passenger side when it's parked, so that the transmission arm is in the way of a socket!) and then snug the nut down (Again, I used blue LocTite to keep mine from walking loose.)

You can tell when the wiper's down if you make a small mark on one of the shafts, and watch it as you move the motor arm right and left (on the car) before you attach it. As you LOOK at the shaft, you want to put it back on the motor in the most counter-clockwise direction.

RwP

 

If I am understanding correctly, I have the mechanism arm that is hooked on the motor with a bracket turned the wrong way?

 

That's my bet; it's parking up, but you put the wiper blades on against the cowl, so it wipes "down on the cowl".

I'll 'fess up I've done that on both the Dakota and the Cougar ...

RwP

 

I got in the truck this morning & the wipers were working like normal, but when I turned the blades off, they were parked high. I would need to reposition the wiper arms on the spindles...right?

 

Not yet.

Disconnect the drive arm from the motor. Let it self-park. Then make sure the wiper arms are down (put one on and walk it through, or just mark the shaft and move the arm back and forth until it's on the lowest point!) and reconnect the drive arm to the wiper motor.

If it turns out it just parks where you turn it off, the park switch is bad in the motor; or the interval wiper control may be failed (either the Cougar or the Dakota uses the interval wiper controller to run the motor down when the park switch is in the non-parked position; don't remember offhand, too lazy to look at the wiring diagrams to see which is which. Verify if it's the Dak or not by checking the factory service manual).

THEN, with it down, carefully position the arms down just above the cowl. Run it a few wipes to see if it settles down any further. Adjust as necessary (take wiper arm off, move it one or two splines the way you want it to move, put it back on. Lather, rinse, repeat.)

RwP

 

Thank You RalphP! Hope to try this solution this Saturday!

 

That's good to know, especially for someone like myself who is still learning basic stuff about working on vehicles. From my experiences so far bad grounds have been the cause of many problems