I was given a Trico Visionall Motor By Allen R. back in the sixties. It needed leather piston cups so I made some, it worked. Allen had drove a Model A Ford with this motor on his car for years, summer and winter.
The Visionall is basically two hollow rods with a Reverse Valve Piston Assembly in the middle. Over the valve assembly is a sealed cylinder that the wiper arms are attached at each end. When manifold vacuum is connected to one rod the vacuum in the cylinder moves it till it hits the valve assembly which triggers a valve to open sending vacuum to the other side of the valve assembly reversing the cylinder then moving in the opposite direction till it repeats.
AND A Very Odd Feature of the Visionall is a “Parking Function” that when vacuum is applied to a small cylinder, it snags the passenger wiper blade and moves it to the driver side where two blades now 3 inches apart wipe together only on the drivers side. Hit the valve again and the passenger blade leaves the driver side and moves back to the passenger side of the windshield. ALL the Automotive Engineers at Trico Products of Buffalo New York could not tell me why it was designed to do that. Many years later at the end of car show season it started to snow and I took off down the road for the last time before taking the Model A off the road for the winter.
As the heavy wet snow started to cover the windshield I turned on the wipers to discover that all the wipers would do was to push the glob of wet snow back and forth fighting without removing it Eureka! Hit the valve, passenger blade stopped fighting the snow and wiped in harmony on the driver side. Mystery finally solved.
The original Trico Visionall Wiper arms were lost after many years off the road in storage. Did not even think at all of trying to find replacements. Just bought new blades and made new arms. Bend metal rod with heat, hammered flat metal over mandrel with a hammer filed to shape, solderer to the rods done. Used small screw with two nuts locked together to make space. The blades must flip freely within arm opening to help reverse flop when changing direction. Don't forget oiling.
One very important thing NOT TO DO is tighten the outside rods too much because you will split the “Reverse Valve Piston Assembly” in two and kill the entire Visionall forever.
Since I never got a control valve with the Trico Visionall Motor had to improvise. I just went to the Pet Fish store for two valves. One to run Visionall and one to move passenger blade to driver side.
Allen's Trico Visionall Motor is still on my 1930 Model A pickup and is still working since 1970.
