I've finally gotten sick of dealing with the proprietary D2 wiper blades, so went to the junkyard and got a set of D1 wiper arms.

Both wiper arm nut covers on the D1 arms had disintegrated, and don't want to buy new nut covers, so wondering whether anyone has found any cap nut covers that will cover the nuts.

 

i believe you can just reuse the D2 wiper arm covers.

 

I went back from the D1 arms to the D2 arms. No matter how I tried to position them, the driver's side D1 arm would either go off the windscreen at the lower part of its arc, leaving a wide unwiped patch at the top, or it would bend the blade against the A pillar. Passenger side was fine. There's no independent adjustment in the mechanism to be able to rotate things somewhere between those two points.
I have some old D2 wiper blade assemblies, so I've taken to buying generic 19" blades and installing them in the D2 blade holders.

 

Interesting you said this because I swapped D1 arms to my D2 and had the same issue. So I got rid of them and put my D2 arms back on, and keep a spare set of wipers and clips in the bins in the back. No problems.

 

I did the same... Tried the D1 arms but could not get enough pressure out of them, I spent more money on standard blades trying to find ones that covered the whole windshield cleanly than the cost of the D2 units. Never did find a blade that worked as well as the D2 ones.

Went back to my D2 arms and have clean streak free windows again.

Just ordered a set of 3 D2 blades (rear included) for $25 from AB's Amazon store...

Did not find the D1 arm conversion to be an "upgrade" at all.

I don't find $25 a year overly expensive. Just part of the cost of owning a D2, which you should not treat as a "cheap" vehicle anyway..

 

I have D1 wipers on mine and they seem to work just fine. Although before I swapped them over I was a little apprehensive because the D2 wipers worked so well and I'm not sure I wanted to fix something that wasn't broken. Maybe the crappy windshield that the PO put in happens to work well with them.

 

How is the driver's side arc with the D1 arms? That would be unrelated to the glass itself.

 

i had to put a little bend in the D1 wiper arm so it would have enough pressure against the windshield.

 

I have D1 arms on my 2004. They are are not OEM parts rather the Britpart clone. The PO had the same arms and where totally worn out, no pressure on the windshield at all. I bought a new set of Britpart arms and $3 Bosch blades from RockAuto and now have a perfectly clean windshield during bad weather.

 

I've noticed no difference, or at the very least no cause for concern if there is a difference.