[Marshall V. Daut]

If you have a choice of either when restoring your car for driving purposes (meaning your car falls within the crossover period), go for the vacuum wiper. I know they are pain when accelerating because they slow down or even stop, but they will FAR outlast the electric wipers Ford used. And those electric wipers are close to 100 years old now and have been used tens of thousands of times. How much life can be left in them? Unless you completely rebuild one (and who can anymore?), a nice looking electric wiper can fail at any time. Ford recognized the rapid wear problem and started changing over to vacuum wipers in 1929 on certain models. The vacuum wipers were also much cheaper. When you're building 5 million cars over a four-year stretch, even saving one dollar per item means 5 million additional dollars in your pocket. I'd like to think old Henry made the change to appease customers and improve the Model A; but the realist in me says he did it to save a buck- and thereby MAKE a buck.
Marshall