Miata wiper arm quick restoration | Garage Rescue Miata

Update by David S. Wallens to the Mazda Miata project car
Sep 29, 2022 | Mazda, Miata, Mazda Miata, Garage Rescue Miata

Miata wiper arms tend to take a beating. Maybe blame that big airfoil. Or maybe it’s the insane velocities that these cars can reach. (Okay, maybe it’s the airfoil.) 

The wiper arms on our Garage Rescue Miata were no concours winners. While we’ve worked to keep our Miata clean, those beat-up arms just looked terrible.  

Genuine replacement wiper arms are available, and Moss sells them for about $57 each.  

But we took a slightly less expensive approach, simply bead blasting and then painting the arms that came with our Miata. 

We weren’t sure how the hinges would take to bead blasting–would they get gritty?–so we kinda stopped a little shy. If this car was heading for Pebble Beach, yeah, we would have gone all the way. Or maybe we would have bought new ones, but then we’d have to explain the later date codes.  

Here are the steps we took to refinish our wiper arms, and these might also work for other makes/models: 

• Remove arms from the car. 
• Bead blast.

• Wipe clean with prep solvent. 
• Hang from tree using cut-up wire hanger. 

• Paint arms. (We used satin black paint from the Krylon Fusion line.) 

• Impatiently touch arms while still tacky. 
• Wait a little longer.  
• Fit new wiper blades. (We went with Hellas.) 
• Reattach arms to car.  

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