Since I’m waiting for my monthly budget to kick in, I decide to tackle a free project, windshield wiper motor repair. When I turned on the windshield wipers, they would get stuck going back down. Tear down is simple:
1) Take the wipers off.
2) Take the fresh air grille off, along with the washer fluid hoses from the discharge nozzles.
3) Disconnect the wiring harnesses from the ballast resistor and the motor.
4) Disconnect the wiper linkage from the motor.
5) There are three bolts that hold the motor in place, take them off and remove the motor.
To get to the guts, there are two 5/16” bolts that hold the armature housing to the rest of the assembly. Once you remove those two bolts, the housing comes off. Mine had two washers sandwiching a spring washer, so be aware of that. There are three graphite brushes that are attached to the base, so even if they pop out, you won’t lose them or the springs.
My armature was dirty, to the point you couldn’t tell the color of the Stack Teeth or that the commutator was copper. BarKeeper’s friend came to the rescue and got everything clean again. I cleaned the armature housing and the magnets real well, installed a dab of high-temp grease in the base and reinstalled the armature.
I reversed the disassembly process, reinstalled the motor and re-connected the wiper linkage. My wipers now work as they did in 1975. Sorry, no pics of the work.
