No, but I would imagine such things are not that uncommon on these cars given the age, and fact that that assembly has likely never been apart.  I've discovered on most F250s around  here the wing bolt that holds the spare tire tool kit in pace seizes in the insert in the floor.  It spins and spins without coming out, meaning you can't get the tools out without destroying something.  The insert is just swedged into place.  The wing part of the hold down is plastic so you can cut that apart, get the tools out, unbolt the back seat, and roll the carpet forward so you can weld the insert to the floor, and then use vice grips to get the metal shank out of the insert.  Then get a good used or later model hold down (use just the wing bolt) and problem solved.  A truly bone headed design on Ford's part. 

Here is the repair, much stronger than the original. The design includes a 3/16” thick steel plate with a 1” hole in the enter and three holes drilled and tapped for 5/16” bolts. Original used 1/4” bolts so those would work as well, but I chose to use something stronger. I had to drill the aluminum wiper pivot plates for the 5/16” bolts

The new plate goes on the external side of the cowl, installed by fishing it through the cowl vent slots with a string through the plate and the wiper pivot holes in the cowl. The string allows it to be pulled up to the cowl and RTV’d in place with the three bolts snugged up until the rtv sets up. Then remove the bolts, apply a liberal amount of rtv to the aluminum pivot flanges and bolt them up to the cowl sheetmetal with the bolts going through the pivot plate, then through the cowl sheetmetal, then threaded into the new plates.  This allows them to be tightened without fear of any inserts falling out.  No gasket is used. The rtv does a much better job.

The pics show it mocked up without the cowl sheetmetal.  The little threaded rectangular parts are the old threaded inserts that pulled out of the cowl sheetmetal.

Well, that should last a 100 years, or more!  Nice work.

Looks like the nuts are just spot welded to the lower section.
Figure a picture might help others understand setup.

Last edited by Nos681 (12/24/2022 9:22 AM)

I noticed the same thing re: the gaskets when I went to install my wipers. The new gaskets I bought were way too thick, in fact they were so thick that I could not even get the bolts started in the threads. When I compared the new gaskets to the old ones, they were at least twice as thick, so I took a razor blade and cut the new leather gaskets in half and then installed them.