Wipers have a mind of their own - don't despair here is another possibility.

 

Hello

 

This is my first post and is by way of a thank for all the useful info you guys have posted. I solved my wiper problem but it took some luck!

 

The problem has been described many times where the wipers start as soon as the ignition is turned on and then wipers don't turn off. I had this and changed the relay as described on many of these threads.

 

This solved the problem for a while but then it came back. So I bought another relay from Skoda at £50 and all was well for two months. Then problem came back as before, but came and went over periods of days. Some weeks they would work normally the back to coming on with the ignition and not turning off. There was no pattern to this, no change of temperature inside or out that matched events. I put a manual switch in to join the wires from the fusebox so at least i had some way of turning them off.

 

What I did notice was that switching the rear wiper on made the front behave normally. So thinking that it was water in the rear wiper motor I took the hatch trim off but nothing seemed wrong. This is where the luck came in big time.

 

Thinking I would have to block or divert the rear washer pipe I traced it through the hatch to the rear of the roof and peeling back the flexible rubber grommet as far as I could the Sun glinted off something shiny. Found the problem! Two Earth wires had been rubbing as the tailgate was raised and lowered. One was the main large earth and the other was the brown and black from the rear wiper. The wires had chafed through the insulation and bare copper wires were touching, sometimes. 

 

Insulated the wires and put some teflon lube on them before covering with the grommet again. All is well and back to normal. 

 

It all made sense and looking at the wiring diagram confirmed it.

 

I have pictures and if someone tells me how I would post them. Meanwhile I hope this may help.

Hello guys...same problem with my Octavia. Unfortunately I've bought a new motor and later discovered that the problem was the relay. It cost me 120 £ to get it fixed (motor+relay+labour).

I have recently had a similar problem with Octavia estate MK 1. The issue was failure of the wipers to work. Bought a new relay box but the rear wiper continued in intermittent mode even though the wipers were switched off. Inside the original relay 4B0 955 531A (377 on the box) I noticed that a piece of the contact on one of the 2 relays was missing. On further examination it was noticed that the boards inside the 377 boxes were totally different in components and layout. The only common components were the 2 relays.

Removing the faulty relay from the old 377 box and replacing it with one from the new box cured the problem. Removing the relay from the 377 box was extremely difficult resulting in the board being destroyed due to plated through hole technology. BUT, I have wipers that work. Has anyone else noticed this issue?