My Felicia has a broken windshield wiper

[Thefeliciahacker]

1 hour ago, D.FYLAKTOS said:

This is for you @Thefeliciahacker who believe that we mustn't have tools in the trunk

@Thefeliciahacker keeps tools in his workshop - storage not in his car...

 

1 hour ago, D.FYLAKTOS said:

Take a look how close the other vehicles were, one wrong step by me and...♿

thats not good nor safe tbh I would drive till I get to a safer spot

 

1 hour ago, D.FYLAKTOS said:

I think you got the idea, who will spend so much for this item?

yep that would be the one and only @Thefeliciahacker who has already spent 2500 euros in fixing his car sooo thats just another expense what are we gonna do?
cry?
If I was thinking like that I wouldnt be driving a brera nor a felicia. I would be driving a corolla.
You know how expensive the Brera is?
Huh? 

brera original rear wiper motor... SOOOO please, lets just be real for a min...

[nta16]

@D.FYLAKTOS to be fair I think it was me that was going on about carrying tools in the boot (Americans take tool much already).  No car is worth what you do in those conditions.

 

45 minutes ago, Thefeliciahacker said:

who has already spent 2500 euros in fixing his car

😄In which month was that expenditure or I should say months at each.  That's not very much, you can't use or drive the car much, or you're not fully fixing a Fiat. 😄  If you think that sort of expenditure is anywhere near so much never think of getting an old English car.

 

I don't know about these two wiper motors but there is often (not always) no need to pay these silly prices just to have a certain badge/logo labelled box or bag or label stuck on to the part especially when these parts are also made for other more popular makes or models and sold at lower or much lower prices.  Yes you might have to cannibalise the new to keep the original part going or to get a good fit to car, or even the whole unit is exactly the same and straight swap.  I can't think VWSkoda or FIAT made actually made wiper motors or that the VWSkoda or FIAT badge/logo labelled box or bag or label stuck on would necessarily be that much better just for the label (or VW part number on the part) unless a very specific design for these (mass market, not low volume production) cars.

 

You two love your cars and that's fine but you can be a little realistic with yourselves, we will tell no one if an unseen rear wiper motor isn't spot concours original (and any replacement isn't original to the car after leaving the factory).

 

Having put that you can't really moan about any expenditure on any car as even the worst most (monetary) valuable car in the general scheme of life is just a lump of metal and other bits.

 

Certainly not worth risking getting knocked over for, with your tools in the boot you can drive elsewhere to do work like that, don't you get a lunch break so you can do it in that underground car park, with age should come some wisdom (if you can remember it by then),

 

Edited 29 March by nta16

[D.FYLAKTOS]

@nta16 The old as i already have wrote couldn't be repaired for 2 reasons so i had to buiy a new.

@Thefeliciahacker Your father has a Brera which is not a supercar, no need to mention it every time, no one is impressed by this.

https://stillrunningstrong.com/car-specs-problems/alfa-romeo/brera/

 

192 euro are ''too much'' for a 24 year old Felicia non-crucial part.

 

Take a look the VIKA, had 2 metal washers and the 2 necessary bolts.

 

 

 

According to the old was: one metal and rubber washer-car body-rubber and metal washer-plastic cap-bolt.

 

https://i.imgur.com/t4HGugV.jpg

 

I have done everything i had to do, put the bolt, tighten and nothing...the bolt was in the end of the thread but there was to "resistance", i could screw the bolt with my hand no need for tool.

I tried again and again but nothing, although there was no thread left the bolt wasn't reached the final end, it just turning around and the whole structure was a bit loose. I start slander my decision to buy this VIKA (and the chinsese metallurgy), i packed everything, took my motorcycle and went to the local market to buy a new bolt.

I visited at least 12 stores and the answer was always negative and i am talking for stores specialized for screws-bolts, parts for plumbers, i visited stores with locks-knobs, stores with tools but every single one had a ''NO" to tell me when i was showing the sample.

No mm or inch metric system, bolt like these can be found there

 

 

 

or there (parts for electricians)

 

https://www.kafkas.gr/ilektrologika/plastika-spiral-koutia-chalyvdina/eidikon-efarmogon/solines-metallikes/exartimata-metallikon-solinon/cosmec-exagono-paximadi-m20-iso_297374/

 

i returned back quite irritated, I laid out the tools again trying to find a solution and all i could think was to use teflon tape around the thread and try again, things went better but not ideal.

On the other hand since the motor is based in one end in a small screw (inside that black rubber integument)

 

https://www.briskoda.net/forums/uploads/monthly_2024_03/-(3).thumb.jpg.ce52f39699b97ef220631aa371031c59.jpg

 

and the hole on the car's body is one wider than the thread (old motor photo)

 

 

 

inevitably there would be a ''slack" and things couldn't be very tight for example as a bolt in a wheel or in front fender etc.

I can't think something else to do, i don't want to push things more because i don't trust that chinsese thread, any suggestions?

 

 

[Thefeliciahacker]

51 minutes ago, D.FYLAKTOS said:

Your father has a Brera

I have a brera. 

And don't whine every time it has a problem I just pay up and fix it up. 

[Thefeliciahacker]

57 minutes ago, D.FYLAKTOS said:

192 euro are ''too much'' for a 24 year old Felicia non-crucial part.

Nope you are not allowed to say that, if you dont want to pay the burden of keeping the felicia running properly just sell it, its as simple as that, when a vehicle gets too expensive to maintain (objectively or ), we dont sit down and cry we just sell it.

 

1 hour ago, D.FYLAKTOS said:

i don't want to push things more because i don't trust that chinsese thread, any suggestions?

yes your best bet is to use rubber square taper washers to space the nut further away and also provide some adequate sealing and vibration damping, also using some nylon spacers would be fine as well, lastly using an xring or an oring thick enough to space the nut out while using a washer.
So nut - washer - car body and so on

[D.FYLAKTOS]

@Thefeliciahacker you start talking like your ''sticky", if i had the money to buy another car i wouldn't be here in the Felicia sector, i have other family expenses.

Wait few years and you have wife-kids and ALL the house expenses on you then you will realize ''by the hard way" that 192 euro for a windscreen wiper don't worth.

 

The problem is that the bolt finished all the way down but it didn't tighten up, no gap to fill, went all the way down and then started swirling itself.

In the back the motor has screw (inside that black rubber integument) and in the front metal and rubber washer-car body-rubber and metal washer-plastic cap-bolt.

When 2 rubber washers involved i don't think that the whole combination could be solid.

[Thefeliciahacker]

13 minutes ago, D.FYLAKTOS said:

The problem is that the bolt finished all the way down but it didn't tighten up, no gap to fill, went all the way down and then started swirling itself

So it stripped? 

Maybe it stripped just the bottom threads above that they could be fine 

[D.FYLAKTOS]

53 minutes ago, Thefeliciahacker said:

So it stripped?

 

Not obvious but maybe was a combination of the main thread and the thread of the bold, together start ruined but not naked eye perceived.

With the teflon tape things got much tighter but not as it should be, i applied also a silicone (for aquarium) to prevent any future leak from rain water.

Installed a new wiper blade,made a first test (the new motor looks much stronger than the old) and here are the results:

 

 

 

and

 

 

 

 

The sound of the motor is normal, it's one click faster but i don't know if the whole ''system'' was solid or not because all these years i never try to check it if it's was loose or not.

[Thefeliciahacker]

Huh fair enough do you have rust BTW? 

[D.FYLAKTOS]

Inside the 5th door? No as far i could see and i saw a lot because i worked in that area (insulation, cables, nylon layer, pull out-install the motor etc), the only sector that i could see was the end of the 5th door where the drain holes are.

If you grab the rear windscreen wiper and move it (a bit) up and down it moves or it's steady?

 

How was in the past, the metal washer was ''hollow" ,not flat and not strong and the tragic was that i couldn't use the old bolt because a mechanic ruin it trying to remove the broken thread.

 

[Thefeliciahacker]

11 hours ago, D.FYLAKTOS said:

you start talking like your ''sticky", if i had the money to buy another car i wouldn't be here in the Felicia sector, i have other family expenses.

Wait few years and you have wife-kids and ALL the house expenses on you then you will realize ''by the hard way" that 192 euro for a windscreen wiper don't worth.

Again that's an invalid parallelism, I don't talk like anyone, I talk just like I would in irl. 

You claim if you had the finances of buying a new car you wouldn't be here in the felicia sector. 

Excuse me but that doesn't make sense, if you can't afford ~4000 euros to buy a used car from the 2008-2010 era then the last thing you should be doing is spending big sums of money on upgrading the felicia. You shouldn't have installed the Konis nor rebuild them neither fitted beefy strut braces, neither different wheels neither upgraded brakes neither chip tune the car nor upgraded air filter. 

All these mods easily add up to the cost of a new used modern car with much less running costs and not 190 euros wiper motors. 

So should have just stopped caring about the felicia and all this money you would have saved plus sale of the car would have easily made you a fund of 5k more than enough to buy something newer and better. 

Soooo I cannot accept you are driving the felly from necessity, you are driving the felly by choice so you should accept all the costs of a hard to find parts for 25 year old car

Just my humble opinion... 

 

[D.FYLAKTOS]

@Thefeliciahacker i left my parents home at 1986, i know my finances better plus suspension-tyres-exhsust-engine etc are essential parts and i have to pay them if i want to keep driving fast.

The windscreen wiper motor is not and does not worth 192 euros.

 

A pass another Felicia before an hour and i grab the windscreen wiper base, no tolerance looked solid, yours it the same? No tolerance at all?

[Thefeliciahacker]

2 minutes ago, D.FYLAKTOS said:

No tolerance at all?

I will check nontheless I have adjusted it once if I recall correctly

[Thefeliciahacker]

1 hour ago, D.FYLAKTOS said:

plus suspension-tyres-exhsust-engine etc are essential parts and i have to pay them if i want to keep driving fast.

You see again you are contradicting yourself, of course you won't drive fast if you don't have money you will drive slow af with lpg fitted. 

 

Let me give you a personal example from our family. 

 

We bought the felicia in 2015 the vehicle was in excellent condition my father kept driving it without caring about anything causing compoundimg damage. 

 

He had a poorly fitted pos lpg system and he didn't care to maintain anything, he was taking the car to very harsh roads and borderline didn't change the oil. 

 

In fact I was doing that under his nose in order to keep the cara engine in good working order. 

 

All that time until 2020 I was keeping a list of the things that were either broken or majorly deteriorated and a cost to fix them all. By that point the list had gotten to 3000ish euros. 

 

At this point I went up to him and said NO MORE. You have superceded the value of the vehicle in damages and you won't have the finances to fix them when they all come crashing down. With that I convinced him to sell the felicia to me. So I kept it as a leisure time vehicle restoring it as I go. 

 

So let me do the parallel to your car. 

You keep driving a vehicle that has ever increasing maintenance costs. 

You've seen some of that very very recently. 

 

You say it's not worth paying 192 euros for the wiper motor but what you should rather say is, it's not worth keeping the car at this point. 

Exaclty what I told to my father then I tell to you know. Because I know that vehicle holds sentimental value to you as the black felly holds to me I didn't advise him to sell it on the free market I just bought it for a very fair price from my father and in it's place came the grande punto which costed us 4000 smth euros. 

 

If we had kept the felly till now in everyday service it's total accumulated costs would have more than 50% surpassed the gpunto's purchase price. These vehicles including my brera are unfit for every day use in moderate to Avg income families. 

 

What you don't understand but yourself admitted is that it costs much more to run these cars (properly) for 2 years than to buy a used economy vehicle and be done with it. 

I can get away with running 2 extremely expensive to maintain vehicles (for a low income guy such as my self) because I use them in turns making sure to keep distance and wear to a minimum on both. 

Keep in mind I do an Avg of 3000-3500kms a year

 

 

[nta16]

Some quick points on the thread and nut issue on the Chinese motor fitting.  Not your fault but I'm a little confused about so forgive me if I have misunderstood.

 

I think it sounds like the threaded section doesn't protrude enough through the tailgate door panel, if so and all the length the dimensions of the shaft cover (sorry can't think of the correct word) of the Chines motor are the same as the original motor could it be the location or fixing of the body support bracket or the rubber insulation (which look thicker than the previous ones) are locating the Chinese motor more inside the tailgate than previous motor thus not allowing enough exposed end thread?

 

I am unsure if you have used the 'Hex nut M20 ISO' or nut that came with the Chinese motor with additional Teflon tape - my thought is that the end nut is to securely locate the "shaft cover(?)" by clamping force and all the rubber washers are to reduce movement and vibration for wear on tailgate panel (hole) and driver's comfort (noise).

 

The thin M20 hex nut is metric thread, assuming it has been checked to fit correctly and smoothly all the way down and back on the thread (three times) this should confirm the thread on the Chinese motor (my eyes are too poor for thread gauges) but as the thin nut is so thin and Chinese 'metal' often so soft and threads so poorly done what I would suggest is buying three of the thin nuts and try them on the thread and select to use the one that goes all the way up and down three times the easiest and smoothest and use that.  Bear in mind the thin nuts could have poor quality threads but easily screwed on by fingers only so any slight catching (forget the proper word again) carefully remove that nut and put it in recycling.

 

The way you have fitted it now may be fine and durable but I don't know I have not seen and felt it but by reading your description(and I might have misunderstood, I often do) I would prefer a different fixing arrangement.  The Chinese 'metal' being as we sometimes refer to technically over here "soft as ****e)" you should not need or want to use any Telfon tape (water plumbing Teflon tape is thinner than gas plumbing Teflon tape).

 

[D.FYLAKTOS]

Factory motor-thin metal washer-rubber washer-car body-thin metal rubber washer-curved thin metal washer-bolt

VIKA motor-thick metal washer-mine rubber washer-car body-mine rubber washer-thick metal washer-new bolt.

 

The thread in both motor comes out from the metal body same distance (same length protruded), the car body hole is intact so both thread have a small gap (yellow arrows).

 

 

Since i have never touched in the past the factory motor i can't be sure how robust the whole combination was from outside but when i opened the 5th door cover i saw factory motor to be mounted only in a plastic base with only one screw, from behind was slacken a bit.

VIKA motor, mounted on a plastic base (different design) with only one screw also, from behind was slacken a bit.

 

 

 

Factory motor, one screw only (yellow arrow) and with tolerance (red arrow), could easily move it and hear a ''clang-clang" noise.

 

From my point of view since there was a tolerance before why not why with the new motor too? No weird sounds, the wiper did it's job and to be honest since in the back there is only one screw and the car body's hole is wider than the threads HOW the whole situation can be now solid as a rock? Since the motor is vibrated (left-right) it can not be 100% tighten for example as a bolt in the wheels or in a front fender or in engine.

So:

1) i think i worry too much

2) the VIKA motor with that problematic bolt will break down faster than usual?

 

I use this teflon tape although i should use this but at that time standing in the sun, with african dust, in the corner of road i had no choice than use the 1st tape on the thread just to make the bolt tighten better-more tougher.

Maybe in future i will use Thread-locking fluid.

 

 

Edited 31 March by D.FYLAKTOS

[Thefeliciahacker]

Use a spacer 

[D.FYLAKTOS]

6 hours ago, Thefeliciahacker said:

Use a spacer 

 

The problem is that the bolt touches the metal washer (which pushes the rubber washer on the car by) and nothing happens, does no ''lock'' in the final position, ''turns crazy'' as we say in GR.

If i put a spacer i would make things worst, maybe the thread on the bolt or in the axon of the motor was defective from the beginning.

Now with teflon tape it's much tighter but i don't know if that ''patent" last long.

[Thefeliciahacker]

28 minutes ago, D.FYLAKTOS said:

''turns crazy''

exactly i bet only the last few mm of the shaft are stripped above that its fine

[nta16]

I follow the sequence of washers and hole aperture and agree with Thefeliciahacker about only the start of the motor thread possibly being poor (and assuming the hex nut has a good thread on it),but I don't see how a spacer will help, perhaps I'm missing something but surely you want to reduce the the thickness of the washers so that more thread is exposed for the nut to clear the poor starter thread, or is all the thread poor.

 

 

[D.FYLAKTOS]

@nta16 This photo that you post was the old thread-washers combination. Even the last bolt needs a 14 wrench which is very uncommon in my car at least.

 

@Thefeliciahacker From the first attempt things went wrong, chinese metallurgy ''my @ss" as the Americans say. Still can not believe that this bolt is so rare that no store has it.

I couldn't use the old because a mechanic ruin it trying to take out the old broken thread, with new bolt and teflon tape (for metal) things would be as the must be.

Today i made a quick check, the whole situation is stable but not solid so in the future maybe i will need a new motor if the vibrations destroy it.

[nta16]

3 hours ago, D.FYLAKTOS said:

@nta16 This photo that you post was the old thread-washers combination. Even the last bolt needs a 14 wrench which is very uncommon in my car at least.

Yes I know.  That was my point previously, that you could perhaps use some of the old motor parts such as metal and rubber washers, clean and revitalise the rubber washers with whatever you have that is best for the job, metal washers it's up to you whether you clean and polish them.  Getting nuts and bolts/setscrews is more difficult now because of the obsession that everything, even a washer, must be posted to the customer rather than the customer going to a shop so retail places that used to stock and sell wide selections of fittings have closed or had to reduce their ranges, you're luck to be dealing with just metric, try getting small sizes of UNF, UNC and getting a selection of BSF, BSW and BSPT, BSPP.  🙂  Until about 10-15 years ago I didn't even know there were three different metric threads.

 

A 14mm spanner size isn't that common but also isn't that rare.  Again old British cars you might need spanners of metric, AF, BSF/BSW and Whitworth for older vehicles, some crossover in fitting to nuts and bolts depending on the quality or wear on fittings and spanners.

 

I've been dealing/suffering with Chinese made car parts (not all Chinese made stuff is poor or abysmal quality but a lot can be) for about 20 years which is how I know you sometimes have to be adaptive, and adapt the Chinese parts, to get a good or reasonable fit and working, sometimes you mix and (almost) match old and new bits.

 

You said the length dimensions of the two shaft covers was the same so I assumed this included the length of the treaded section so the photo of the old motor and washers and nut would be relevant.  If you want to use the thicker washer(s) then you could look for a half/lock nut which would have more threads on it than the very slim M20 hex nut but take up less motor thread than the supplied whole, standard depth, nut.  If you wanted you could add threadlock as anti-vibration security, or my mate reckons Tipex is fine too (unless they've changed the formula).

 

Edited 1 April by nta16

[nta16]

ETA: forgot the photo. -

 

[D.FYLAKTOS]

22 minutes ago, nta16 said:

you could perhaps use some of the old motor parts such as metal and rubber washers

 

The 1st rubber washer (factory) was damaged, i tried the 2th and the metal washer (factory) but again the bolt refuse to tighten completely.

 

24 minutes ago, nta16 said:

Until about 10-15 years ago I didn't even know there were three different metric threads.

 

First time i heard about the Americanic UNC from a seller, an example:

https://tsamouris.gr/category/2626

 

I knew that some items for example mailboxes, living room lights have their own difficult to find thin bolts but in a EU car i was expected to find mm metric system.

The factory hole (on car body) is a bit wider than the diameter of the thread, maybe this (also with the addition of 2 rubber washers) was done in purpose due to the vibrations of the windscreen blade.

 

[nta16]

Why not remove the Teflon tape, clean motor shaft cover and nut threads and generous use of threadlock, the rubber washers are taking up small movements so the fitting doesn't need to be "murder tight" as long as the nut remains secure in its position.

 

Thefeliciahacker is the engineer here but I would guess the hole is bigger with washers and nut clamping as -

• German engineering is as we (but probably not Thefeliciahacker) might say here "not all it's cracked up to be" (exaggerated or misplaced praise, not as good as reputation makes out it is) so you have to allow for variances of fittings and speed and ease of factory assembly
• exact hole size may cause metal to metal wear
• exact hole size may cause vibration which would annoy driver and passengers from the door skin panel and later wear of motor shaft cover and/or door skin and operation of wiper.