[Vwdiesel] Cold car and windshield wiper issues

[Erik Lane]

On Thu, Nov 25, 2010 at 5:24 PM,  <LBaird119 at aol.com> wrote:
> In a message dated 11/25/2010 4:59:55 PM Pacific Standard Time,
> eriklane at gmail.com writes:
>
>> Does anyone have any experience with anything like this? Also, does
>> anyone have a digital copy of the wiring diagram for if I get a chance
>> to get in there with a meter? I'd like it just in case there are
>> problems with not getting the power to the motor, so that I can trace
>> down where it's supposed to be coming from.
>>
>> This is a 1981 Jetta diesel.
>>
>>
>
>  You probably have two, mechanical issues going on here.  Firstly NEVER
> run
> A1 wipers if the blades are iced in place, it'll strip the insides of the
> arm mounts.

Yeah, point taken. I know better, but they had been fine and I didn't
know they had gotten frozen until I hit the wiper switch. By then it
was too late. :(

> A2's are better but still not good.
>  Pop the nut covers and remove the 10mm (socket size) nuts and washers,
> then pop off your wiper arms.  Get some lube into the pivots, they get
> stiff and
> draggy all on their own so it's a good time to take 5 minutes and get some
> Kroil,
> PB Blaster, even WD-40 into them.  Then reinstall your arms (left and right
> may
> differ, they do on A2).  Get them pushed on well, put on the nuts and
> washers
> then tighten fairly snugly.
>  Your problem was that the arms stuck, there are no splines in the arms
> but
> the tapered splines on the mounts bite into the arm and make their own
> impression.
> When the arms can't move, the splines strip and keep moving.  After so many
> of
> these episodes you must replace the arms.
>     Loren


Thanks for all of the advice!

But I don't think that the splines slipped on the inside. Mainly
because then once I had flipped the switch back to off they still kept
trying to go until they had gotten back to their rest position. Since
the contacts for where 'rest' is are inside the motor, if it were
slipping it would stop at some point before that. And then once they
stopped slipping they would have some crazy position for where they
would want to stop.

Unless I'm not understanding how they work as well as I think I do.
Definitely possible, but I've had the whole system apart on different
cars, so I thought I had at least the control side figured out fairly
well.

At any rate, I'll pull the nuts off and clean and lube as well as I
can. I don't want to pull the motor out here in the cold, but I know
that if I can get it in a halfway warm shop/garage it doesn't take too
much to do it. Maybe I should just play it safe and plan to pull it
unless I see super low voltage at the motor connector. I was really
hoping something else obvious would jump out at someone else. Wishful
thinking! :)

Happy Thanksgiving everyone, and thanks!
Erik