Hey guys/gals,Not sure if this is a common thing on 2007 Vibe's but the two lift gate bolts that hold the wiper motor assembly in place have become rusted. It is kind of weird because the two that hold the lift struts are fine.So what I want to do is to remove them off the car, wire wheel them to remove the rust and repaint them properly with additional coats of clear coat, baking the paint so it doesn't come off again. I sanded them and repainted them last summer while it was on the car but you really need to remove them to do the job properly.I looked at the thread started by "A Psycho Martyr" on how to remove the wiper motor assembly (awesome diy thread btw) so I know that I have to do that to get to the nuts... what I want to know is if I just simply put the appropriate socket to these nuts and remove them or is there something special involved since they go through the glass...considering these go through the back glass I don't want to take the chance of smashing the glass by doing something stupid.Here is a pic of the two nuts (pic I took from "A Psycho Martyr"'s post, hope you don't mind)
Never mind folks.... it was easier than I thought. These bolts are reverse thread, so rather than normally going counter clockwise to loosen you go clockwise. I managed to get these pieces wire wheeled pretty good and hit them up with three coats of primer, three coats of gloss black paint, and 3 coats of clear coat.... I was in a rush though as I had to reassemble the whole thing so the wife could take the car, so the paint is not cured and was soft when I put it all back together so I ended up nicking the paint a bit. But it's better than the rust that was there before and hopefully it will harden over the next few days. At least I know how it all comes apart now and if I ever do this again it will only take me literally 15 minutes to pull these off, this time I will leave them dry overnight before reinstalling it.It is so weird the way the factory hardened paint came off these pieces and the other two for the lift gate struts did not... they were either flawed from the factory or there is some weird way that the water/salt/sand mixed crap on the roads swirl around the back of the car creating a sort of miniature sandblaster ...Anyway.. thanks for the excellent tutorial ...