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Wiper motor, linkage, intermittent, door locks


madmanperez
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Here's another one I can't get my head around. This winter has been a little colder than most (central Florida not know for freezing temps), What I've noticed is my front wipers won't do a full sweep. They pause on the way up, sit there then go a little further, pause again then park and start all over again. Only on intermittent setting. On regular they go full sweep up and down but when you go to turn them off the switch momentary goes thru the intermittent setting and you don't get a complete park. Mind you, if I set the intermittent setting all the way up that it is running like regular low setting then it works fine, start and stop.

 

Basically, all that goes away after you let the wipers do its stop and go routine.

 

Similarly, the passenger door locks sticks when cold. Open drivers side and you hear the actuator. If you open/unlock from the passenger side both unlock. As mentioned before all that goes away was the car is warmed up or the lock is operated lock/unlock multiple times.

 

Any thoughts are always appreciated 

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I dug into my wiper situation today.  It was worse than expected but an easy fix.  The pivots were frozen up on mine(the part the wiper attaches to), they were stuck.  One of the previous owners just loosened them up so the whole pivot assembly rotated ish allowing the wipers to move.  Total hack job.

I removed the pivots, took them apart, cleaned them, greased them with some white lithium grease, and reinstalled.  The wipers work perfectly now.  It was a pretty simple a project, remove the wipers, very carefully remove the wiper cowl pieces.  Take the wiper motor completely loose so you can undo the wiper linkage from it, remove the large nuts holding the pivots in, remove the linkage that went to the motor, then pull the whole assembly out the passenger side.  The pivots have a small retaining clip just below where the wiper goes.  Remove that clip and drive them apart with a hammer and brass punch.  I cleaned mine with a wire brush in a drill, then brake clean, then greased and put back together.  

The original grease was just nasty and solidified 

ZICWfQX.jpg

Edited by BlueCuda
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There is a ground on the wiper motor to chassis.  It’s a u shaped sheet metal clip over one of the mounting bolts. If this becomes corroded, the wipers will do exactly what you describe when on intermittent.   They also will not return to home position properly on slow or fast speed when turned off if this ground is lost. 
 

i can post a picture of the ground but it won’t be until Monday when I can get on my pc

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As promised, here are the photos.   

If you study the wiring diagram, you will see this one connection from a switch simply terminate in the wiper motor block.  This switches ground and it is for the intermittent feature and the return to home feature when the wipers are turned off.   Thus, it needs to be grounded to chassis.   The clip serves this function.  It goes around one of the mounting bolts.   Because the mounts are on rubber isolators, the motor cannot ground to chassis, hence the reason for this clip, it simply bridges the motor frame to the motor mounting bolt (to chassis).  

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Open it up and clean it off to bare metal

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I put a thin layer of dielectric grease over it when done to keep it from corroding again (not shown).

 

Also while you are here, pull the three Philips screws off of the drive cover and inspect.  This could also be the source of your issue.

It needs to be cleaned good if the grease looks horrible inside.   Note the dark thick consistency in this photo.   Also, this photo was taken AFTER wiping a lot of that old old grease off.  When I first opened it, it had so much of that thick gelatinous grease that you couldn't even see the brass rings.  Basically if this is all grimed up, it will cause the same issue you have.  For this is the 'switch' in the diagram above.   The two brass leads on the cover need to contact the brass rings properly.  

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To remedy this, simply clean it up and re-grease with dielectric grease.   

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Make sure your contacts are not all bent.  The top one should be contacting the innermost brass sleeve (the one that wraps about 300 degrees around).  The lower one will contact that small outer sleeve and for the rest of the time will ride on the plastic.   If they are bent, you may have to experiment a little by bending them a similar position as shown in these photos, bolting it back up, and trying it...repeating with a different bend if unsatisfactory.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Oh and for the passenger door lock....this typically is the result of some of the black goo that is used for the clear plastic liner under the door panel gets in the locking lever mechanism and gums it up.  Pull the door panel, remove the locking lever assembly (the black plastic lever you slide over to lock the doors from the inside), clean it up really good with solvent so that the lever operates with no noticeable friction, and reassemble.   

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my thanks to all of you. First up will be the wipers. with warmer days coming (non-freezing temps) the door lock is working ok so not high on the priority list.

again I just want to drive home my thanks for all the great info.

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