windshield wiper issue

just another example of my car's screwy electrical system :rolleyes:

after we got hit really bad with that snowstorm a few weeks ago, my wipers have been acting strange. if i set the wipers on the intermittent setting, they move at the LOW speed. there is no pause in between sweeps. however, sometimes they will pause for a moment at a point in their sweep and then keep moving at low speed. the low and high speeds work as they should.

when i spray the washer fluid, the wipe fine for a few seconds, and then stop anywhere in the middle of the windshield.

and you know how you can tap the control stick for the wipers, and just have them do a quick sweep back and forth, then return to the bottom? well, mine dont do that anymore. they stop wherever they are when i let go of the control stick. so if i want then to return to the bottom where they should be, i have to hold the stick the whole time and then let go at the exact moment they're at the bottom.

this may be a motor problem, not electrical. i was just seeing what you guys thought. i hope my description made sense :)

Joe, i have the same issue. But this occured after i removed my whole wiper arms from the car. The spline grooves were totally stripped for reasons i dont know. And when i put it on Intermitted, they just stop half way up, so i have to turn it to slow (the second setting) to make them come back down and turn it off. I think it has to do with the swipe pivot that holds the motor arms under the vent and the wiper arms itself. Oh well, i gotta see if i can do something about it.

It might be the switch also, but I have no idea how to go about testing that. I had my headlight/turn signal switch go bad and it made it do some weird things, lol

before you start testing switches, try changing your wiper motor. Inside the case it has switches for home and what not and somtimes they get screwy. I had the same thing happen as you describe and thats what it was.

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Originally posted by smufguy
Joe, i have the same issue. But this occured after i removed my whole wiper arms from the car. The spline grooves were totally stripped for reasons i dont know. And when i put it on Intermitted, they just stop half way up, so i have to turn it to slow (the second setting) to make them come back down and turn it off. I think it has to do with the swipe pivot that holds the motor arms under the vent and the wiper arms itself. Oh well, i gotta see if i can do something about it.

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yeah im wondering if when i turned my car on that night, my wipers may have been on. and since they were buried under a foot and a half of snow, i could have stripped something. i dont really know the inner workings of wiper motors, so it baffled me that it works fine on low and high, but not intermittently.

i would take teh motor off and play with it a little bit !

MIKE

i dont think its the motor, its the spline grooves i guess. I went and checked it out today and actually found it slipping under the intermitted setting cause the motor spins really slow. andit just slips. on high, u got momentum to go back and forth and its fine. I know my motor is not at fault cause my wipers were working perfectly until i removed them and found the splines stripped. Hope u get urs fixed joe.

the whinshield motor main gears are like that ! | _
and other gears for speed !

MIKE

the park position in the motor may be playing up, try a known good one to verify if you dont want to go thru all the circuit tests for the motor

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Originally posted by smufguy
The spline grooves were totally stripped for reasons i dont know.

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I know why. It's because of the golden rule for winter and wipers. SCRAPE window first, to break free the wipers, otherwise, this will happen, eventually. Or if you try to wipe a big blanket of snow off the windshield, chances are this will eventually happen.. too much pressure on wiper arms.

Happened to me on both sides of my 86 Olds ninety-eight... (bad design too).

i never put my wipers on with ice on it. I even pull my wiper arms straight off the windshield and make them like stand up before it snows so the rubber wont get frozen with the ice.