Graebob
Guest
Sorry to start a new thread, as I've found quite a few posts about this problem from the past, but figured this is long enough that it deserves a new thread.
The symptoms were wipers sticking during heavy operation, usually alright for the first couple of swipes but progressively worse and worse, to the point where I was driving on the motorway yesterday (220 mile trip to see folks) and the wipers seized completely. Stopped on the hard shoulder and pondered for a bit, started up again and the wipers worked! I was begining to suspect electrical gremlins. When I got the the missus' parents house her dad agreed to help me (i.e. do most of the work and generally school me in mechanicing
) fix the problem. We figured it was probably a problem with the assembly, so we took the car to bits as follows:
- Remove the rubber seal surrounding the top half of the engine bay, which seals between the bonnet and the bay. This just unclips, its not glued in or anything, so don't worry about removing it
- Remove pollen filter by unscrewing the two small cross heads located on the right of the engine bay. These do not *screw* in, but are actually small fasteners. Loosen them and then pull them out with your fingers or a pair of pliers.
- Remove wipers (use a puller to get the blade off if you have to, my passenger wiper was worse than the drivers side, which came off with a bit of WD40 and creative wiggling).
- Remove the large plastic sash covering the wiper assembly/heater intake. This just clips in along the base of the windscreen, but consideirng the buildup of crap underneath you will probably feel like it's glued on. Just be persistent, it will come off if you tug UPWARDS. Try getting your fingers underneath and pushing up if you feel like you might brake the clips
- Remove the two trays beneath where the wipers are. These divert water away towards the wings.
Now you can see the assembly. It's a lot easier to remove everything if you undo the nut in the centre of the wiper motor, however to do this effectively you need to set the motor going to move the brass rotating arm away to reveal the nut. Do this by setting the wipers going, then turning off the ignition. BEFORE you remove the nut, mark the position where the arm stops after you've turned off the ignition, this will be useful later when you come to re-assemble the arms.
- Remove the brass arm nut
- Check the play in the wiper arms by tugging on their respective control arms (the push/pull bits with VW stamped all over them).
You'll probably find that these are incredibly stiff, because crap has accumulated in the rotating shafts of the wiper spindles. Thats what was wrong with mine, so we carried on as below.
- Remove the 3 nuts retaining the wiper linkage base unit, remove the electric connection underneath and remove from the car.
- Take to the nearest vice, remove the circlips and washers on the tops of the spindles, and use whatever method you can to get the spindles out of their retaining bodys. We managed to almost get them free by simply extering a downward force while pushing and pulling the control arms, but to get them all the way out you definitely need to exert some force with a hammer. Preferably avoid knackering the thread on the top of the spindle by hitting it directly, instead use something long and thin to fit over the end and tap it out that way.
The spindle is comprised of a central shaft with the thread and splines at one and and a rubber seal about halfway up, and 2 brass bearings at either end. One of these will probably come out with your spindle when you knock it out of the body, so remove it (we put the spindle in the vice and tightened it almost all the way, then knocked the spindle through). Clean out all the accumulated crap inside the body of the linkage unit with wire wool and plenty of WD40. Clean the shafts using a similar method.
It's then pretty much the reverse of the above steps to re-assemble each spindle, refit into the linkage base unit and put that back in the car. This is where it becomes useful to have marked the position you left the motor in, as we had to use a bit of trial and error to find the right place. Easy enough, just saves you ten minutes to think ahead.
Total job time was about 2 hours, including washing all the accumulated sh*te off the bottom of the windscreen and clearing out the guttering underneath the plastic sash. We guessed the reason why the wipers would get progressivley worse is the buildup of heat in the brass bearings, due to working against all the crap inside.
Full credit to my girlfriends dad and his garage
Obviously I take no responsibility for you buggering up your car by doing it wrong, or if your problem isn't the same as this one 
The symptoms were wipers sticking during heavy operation, usually alright for the first couple of swipes but progressively worse and worse, to the point where I was driving on the motorway yesterday (220 mile trip to see folks) and the wipers seized completely. Stopped on the hard shoulder and pondered for a bit, started up again and the wipers worked! I was begining to suspect electrical gremlins. When I got the the missus' parents house her dad agreed to help me (i.e. do most of the work and generally school me in mechanicing
) fix the problem. We figured it was probably a problem with the assembly, so we took the car to bits as follows:- Remove the rubber seal surrounding the top half of the engine bay, which seals between the bonnet and the bay. This just unclips, its not glued in or anything, so don't worry about removing it
- Remove pollen filter by unscrewing the two small cross heads located on the right of the engine bay. These do not *screw* in, but are actually small fasteners. Loosen them and then pull them out with your fingers or a pair of pliers.
- Remove wipers (use a puller to get the blade off if you have to, my passenger wiper was worse than the drivers side, which came off with a bit of WD40 and creative wiggling).
- Remove the large plastic sash covering the wiper assembly/heater intake. This just clips in along the base of the windscreen, but consideirng the buildup of crap underneath you will probably feel like it's glued on. Just be persistent, it will come off if you tug UPWARDS. Try getting your fingers underneath and pushing up if you feel like you might brake the clips
- Remove the two trays beneath where the wipers are. These divert water away towards the wings.
Now you can see the assembly. It's a lot easier to remove everything if you undo the nut in the centre of the wiper motor, however to do this effectively you need to set the motor going to move the brass rotating arm away to reveal the nut. Do this by setting the wipers going, then turning off the ignition. BEFORE you remove the nut, mark the position where the arm stops after you've turned off the ignition, this will be useful later when you come to re-assemble the arms.
- Remove the brass arm nut
- Check the play in the wiper arms by tugging on their respective control arms (the push/pull bits with VW stamped all over them).
You'll probably find that these are incredibly stiff, because crap has accumulated in the rotating shafts of the wiper spindles. Thats what was wrong with mine, so we carried on as below.
- Remove the 3 nuts retaining the wiper linkage base unit, remove the electric connection underneath and remove from the car.
- Take to the nearest vice, remove the circlips and washers on the tops of the spindles, and use whatever method you can to get the spindles out of their retaining bodys. We managed to almost get them free by simply extering a downward force while pushing and pulling the control arms, but to get them all the way out you definitely need to exert some force with a hammer. Preferably avoid knackering the thread on the top of the spindle by hitting it directly, instead use something long and thin to fit over the end and tap it out that way.
The spindle is comprised of a central shaft with the thread and splines at one and and a rubber seal about halfway up, and 2 brass bearings at either end. One of these will probably come out with your spindle when you knock it out of the body, so remove it (we put the spindle in the vice and tightened it almost all the way, then knocked the spindle through). Clean out all the accumulated crap inside the body of the linkage unit with wire wool and plenty of WD40. Clean the shafts using a similar method.
It's then pretty much the reverse of the above steps to re-assemble each spindle, refit into the linkage base unit and put that back in the car. This is where it becomes useful to have marked the position you left the motor in, as we had to use a bit of trial and error to find the right place. Easy enough, just saves you ten minutes to think ahead.
Total job time was about 2 hours, including washing all the accumulated sh*te off the bottom of the windscreen and clearing out the guttering underneath the plastic sash. We guessed the reason why the wipers would get progressivley worse is the buildup of heat in the brass bearings, due to working against all the crap inside.
Full credit to my girlfriends dad and his garage
Obviously I take no responsibility for you buggering up your car by doing it wrong, or if your problem isn't the same as this one
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