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We discovered that the cause to a majority of the slow, sticky, or non-functioning front wiper arms are not due to bad motors, but rather due to the linkage arm pivots binding/sticking. This in turn makes the wiper motors have to work twice as hard and in most cases slow down, stick, or otherwise stop working because they are not strong enough to overcome the binding.
We've put together a kit which includes all the components necessary to replace the front wiper linkage plastic bushing cups and eliminate any binding in the two pivot assemblies on the FD.
Congratulations to JP3 for building a rebuild kit for what was, quite literally, the ONLY moving component in my frame-up refurbishment that I had not been intending to touch. I didn't think they were appreciably bad before the car went on jack-stands, they were buried in the cowl, and frankly I didn't think there was anything about them that needed to be touched. So I hadn't intended to. Until it was made easy for me.
So I did mine this past weekend. It'll be a lot longer to actually see them installed on a completed car than I want to admit... but it will definitely be an improvement.
I did measure the resistance for giggles. It took 3lbs of force to get the linkage to rotate before which I would describe as "notably resistant". And, after the rebuild, they literally spin freely. Obviously without knowing the torque of the motor, taking into account the angles of the linkages, etc it's impossible to quantify the improvement and even moreso without a functioning car. But the objective impact has to be very significant.
I will say that if you are going to plate the hardware so you can look all fancy like JP3s did (mine look painted here, but that's zinc chromate plating), note that the rod slides into the barrel with ZERO tolerance. Even a couple-thou of zinc plating was sufficient to totally prevent the parts from mating back together at all.
