A couple of months ago, the blower motor in the van took a dump. It wasn't surprising after 20 years. At first, I thought it was the switch because all of these older Toyotas seems to have issues with the contacts getting corroded or plastic getting melted due to high current passing through them. So I tore apart the interior and replaced the jumper harness and switch I got from the junk yard.





The "new" switch I got from the breakers wasn't good either upon testing (it was reading hundreds of ohms, and no consistent reading... it was dodgy to say the least), but it was in good shape externally, no melted plastic or burnt marks, so I took it apart and cleaned the contacts:

after some dielectric grease, it was reading 0.01 ohms!

Well, even with the new switch, the blower motor wasn't really spinning. So I took out the blower unit from under the hood and tested the blower. It wouldn't work right side up, but worked upside down. So while I was waiting for a new blower motor to arrive, I upgraded the wiper system from my early 90-93 style to the later 94-99 style, which was simplified and works better. The original intention of changing the wiper arms was because they were rusty and no paint would ever fix the problem. Also, the early style blades are screw on type and getting any replacements were difficult, especially refills. The newer style ones have easier to find refills and I can fit generic wiper blades in an emergency as they just use standard hook type blades.

The old wipers:


The new wipers:


I replaced all of the wiper transmission parts with ones I got from the junk yard as they're newer and less rusty. The only difference between the new and old style wiper transmission is the passenger side wiper drive. The older style one is taller and larger to fit the additional pivot arm.
Old:

New:


Due to these differences, the cowl panel is also different between the 90-93 and 94-99. The cowl panel I got from the junk yard had broken clips so I had to buy new clips and replace them. They were a real pain to replace! I figured out how to replace them eventually.



So the final result:

Compare to the old wipers: