Well my front wipers ceased working yesterday in the rain.  Now locked in the "down" position.   Washer jets work, front and rear and I've swapped fuses with no joy so suspect the fault is the wiper switch or the wiper motor itself.  Any common faults with these or is it just a case of pulling the motor and/or switch and replacing one or both?

 

Any other tests that can be done?  Car is Mk1 VRS estate with around 210k miles.

 

cheers

They can seize due to no grease on the linkage. Should be a few topics about it.

Easy enough to take out and re-grease the parts. If the motor is dead, make sure you get a VRS part and not another other make... I went to a scrap yard and took out the complete motor and linkage from a non vRS and spindle arms/linkage was a different size meaning the wipers were all over the bloody place. Thankfully I only needed one spindle so I measure up and replaced it.

Assuming there's a plug on the wiper motor you could try putting a volt meter on it when moving the stalk to different positions. I'd guess the motor/mechanism is the most likely issue. I know on the older VW Sharan/Seat Alhambra/Ford Galaxy seized wiper mechanisms are quite a common problem - not sure if the same thing affects other VAG models of the same era.

 

You're slightly ahead of me on mileage - good work! 😁

@Fastblack - As others, the most probable cause (not trim dependent BTW) is seized pivots. They may even "come back" if you help them in the direction they were trying to go a couple of times.

Thanks - I'll give the wiggle about thing a go then see about a replacement motor unit.  Great fun coming over the Cairn O Mount yesterday!

 

Tried wiggling - no joy yet.  i presume its ok to connect a battery directly to the motor, but which of the five connectors should I put a +ve wire to, or doesn't it matter? 

Lube up the linkage. That's the more common fault and if it has siezed up, you may end up burning the motor out, in which case you'll then need a new motor on top.

Agreed; if the linkage didn't come back after a couple of helps, the pivots need lubricating.

Take a photo, than take it all apart, clean it all and do what the others have said. You can run the motor with out the linkage if you want that was you won’t burn out the motor.

OK - got the motor and linkage out and separated the motor from linkage arms.  Linkage on its own seems to move freely from side to side with very little effort from me. 

I'm unable to rotate the spindle on the motor however, unless I try quite hard with a spanner on spindle nut..........seized motor then?   Is there an easy way to test it linking up directly to a 12v battery or some other way?

 

***EDIT - Brief update - reattached motor only to its electrical connector and ran an earth wire from one of the motor mounting bolt holes to the frame and checked for continuity electrical between the two points......flicked wiper switch on but still no activity at motor.  No noises, no movement.  

Washer jets function fine so thinking switch is fine and motor is dud.  Anything else I can check?

 

Edited 21 August, 20196 yr by Fastblack
new info

On 21/08/2019 at 19:30, Fastblack said:

switch is fine and motor is dud

That sounds about right; we were suggesting checking the cheaper stuff first.

Edited 21 August, 20196 yr by KenONeill

Sorted for now - swapped the motor from my 2002 TDI, which is identical part number in my case, and all is good once again.

 

TDI is a different story - to be told elsewhere........