Wiper cowl

OGMB2K

So I do not know how many of your have taken apart your wiper cowl. I encourage you to do so for the sake of some house keeping.
I took mine apart for curiosity and was astonished. It appears that my truck spent its life under a tree. From the time I popped off the grilles and later removed the wiper motor, the entire bay was full of leaves. So as an intelligent human, I began shoving my hands blindly into the holes in order to clean out the cowl .. DO NOT DO THAT !!
After finishing and blowing it out, I realized that their could have been Spiders, Squirrels, Snakes, whatever, that could have bitten scratched or generally made my life miserable .. lol
Once done though, I made a few observations. For those that have taken these off before, are only two of the holes covered, despite their being three? In the case of my truck the third hole is a copy of the smaller PS grille.
So my takeaway, I will likely be putting home screen material on top of these covers to avoid debris re entering the cavern and possibly rusting out the truck with damp leaves. It's cool to see the JDM configuration for the wipers, I just couldn't find the fourth wiper hole, so I'm left wondering if just changing the position of one of the wipers was enough along with reversing the motor direction.
Anyhow here are the pics ...

MazdaMitch

Yeah that extra wiper armhole is for changing the position for right hand drive left hand drive vehicles.

What a lot of people don't understand is when they stamped out these trucks they were pretty much universal even down to the wiring harness there's a lot left over it confuses some people on the wiring harnesses but they have to understand that it was almost as if a one wiring harness for all was done by Mazda.

This of course is to save cost.
Different trim levels and 4x4 versus 4x2 demanded different things to be plugged in.

As for the covers they only came with one or two and it's obvious that they all need to be covered but they're not.

It is a good idea to make your own screens and make it better than Mazda did however you can get more of these from another truck and they both right on.

OGMB2K

MazdaMitch Agreed, and that's where I am starting, knowing what you know, do those covers have screens originally? My covers do not, and the slits are large enough obviously to allow leaves to fall right in, not to mention the third hole. My intent, and I will add to this thread when I do it is to glue the porch screen material to the covers allowing water and wind, but no debris. Still wont stop the critters unless I screen in the large holes on either side of the truck that are there for drainage I assume, yet they are still large enough for animals like squirrels to get in if you do not have the plastic fender liners ..

Not keen on providing free housing for local wildlife. LOL

MazdaMitch

OGMB2K no they did not come with any type of good screens it was just those plastic covers with the large gaping slits in them.

Cusser

Correct, the covers do not have screens, and my '88 had just two. So I picked up a third at the parts yard a decade ago.

Below: this is someone else's truck.

OGMB2K

Looks good and exactly what I was thinking, seems like an easy vulnerability for rot in these trucks