Wipers Won't Wipe !

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dogdog1

Active Member
Posts
170
Hi All , I replaced the wiper motor on my '95 300tdi 110 which was missing when I bought the vehicle . It's a Lucas 14W motor with a 115* gear wheel . With the wiper arms lifted off the screen all works smoothly , good sweep and no play anywhere , but if I put even one wiper blade on the glass it barely moves . The spring on the wiper arm does not feel excessively strong yet it seems to act as an anchor , to the extent that the wiper motor heaves against it's clamp ! I hope someone can help with this .
 
Hi All , I replaced the wiper motor on my '95 300tdi 110 which was missing when I bought the vehicle . It's a Lucas 14W motor with a 115* gear wheel . With the wiper arms lifted off the screen all works smoothly , good sweep and no play anywhere , but if I put even one wiper blade on the glass it barely moves . The spring on the wiper arm does not feel excessively strong yet it seems to act as an anchor , to the extent that the wiper motor heaves against it's clamp ! I hope someone can help with this .
disconnect motor and move wipers by hand if stiff faults in rack /wheel boxes etc ,if they travel freely its a weak motor
 
Following on from James's point, I've had the problem where the gear wheels that engage with the rack become loose on the spindles. So with no load everything moves, but with a wiper on the motor runs and the cogwheels go round but the spindles don't move. If this is the problem, you can firm them up by going round the join between the wheel and the spindle with a centre punch, or better still a dollop of weld might help.
 
It looks like I'm going to have to take a look at the wheel box's . I disconnected the the motor and the wipers moved freely across the screen by hand . I still don't think it's a weak motor because of the way it heaves and pushes against it's clamp as it tries to work . It's like there's something getting blocked when it's under load . I'll have a look at it tomorrow .
 
Recheck the wiring, especially the various connectors. A small amount of corrosion can cause a strange condition where when there's very little load on the motor there's less current being drawn and less voltage dropped across a bad joint.
When the load increases the current also increases and so does the voltage drop across that bad joint resulting in the motor not running or running very slowly.

Check the earth wiring too.
 
I had a couple of similar problems a while ago.
The first was that the earth was poor which was sorted out by wire brushing the wiper motor clamp bolt and re-attaching the earth.
The second was due to the circlip holding the cam wheel onto the pivot having dropped off at some time, and the wipers stopped working. New circlip, and the job was sorted!
No problems since!!
Hope this helps.
 
D'OH ! ... Would you believe it , there's a nut that goes on the end of the motor ! It was hidden up in the rubber sleeve and I never copped it , til a friend of mine who's more familiar with these things took a look at it and spotted it . Now it works fine , although the sweep in reality is more like 90 degrees than 115 , but that's probably par for the course . Is it ? Thanks for all replies .
 
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