504 Wipers jammed

forumnoreason

forumnoreason

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Au secours! Turned the windscreen wipers on this arvo and they jammed up after heaving themselves across the screen. I have a hunch a relay might be kaput, the fuses are all good, it was getting too dark to spot a relay and I don't have enough light to see. Where is the relay on an 82 model? Other than that is it a scuttle panel off job?
 
It's a scuttle panel job off if you need to access the motor. Don't know about a relay.
 
Decades ago mine did the same. I think that the grease had seized up.
 
I'll be driving around till Saturday hopefully not bucketing down before I can go at it, if its just grease I'll be happy. Having never ripped one apart do the fenders have to come off to find some hidden bolts/screws somewhere?
 
Guards stay in place, just undo the bolts on the front lip. Some careful manoeuvring of the bonnet is needed to avoid scratching the scuttle panel and/or breaking the washer jet tubes.
 
Try lifting the blades off the screen and see if they move when there is no resistance. I do this on my 504 cab if i have washed it At first they move slow then quickly get faster then back down on the screen they are normal again. I never drive it in the rain so the wipers go for long periods without being used
 
As Neil says, it's probably dried-out grease. Try squirting WD40 on the shafts where they come out of the car, otherwise re-grease the joints inside the scuttle panel and WD40, then spray lithium grease in the shaft where it comes out of the motor.

And as Peter says, manoeuvre very carefully around bonnet base to avoid scratching scuttle panel. Best done with a second person. I used to get a pencil and draw a line where the bonnet sat where it was bolted on (so I could bolt it back in exactly the same place), then loosen those bolts so I could pull the bonnet out to maximum. Good to also put a thick towel or similar in between as it's really very easy to scratch the scuttle panel on the end of the bonnet.
 
thanks for tips folks, I lifted them off the screen to see if they'd move but nada. Will have to sort because it currently looks like it came out of a Jacques Tati film...
 
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I had this happen on a 504 during a rainy spell (of course). Couldn't fix it straight away, but a good application of Rain-X to the screen made the car reasonably safe to drive. In my case it was the RHS shaft had seized, but the grease in the motor was also dried up and high friction. Probably worth looking into both while you're at it.

Have fun,

Rob.
 
Hmm, when you think about it, a 1982 504 is not quite 40 years old and the windscreen wiper mechanism probably hasn't been touched since 1982! There could be all of the above - a motor that needs re-greasing, etc and shafts that are a bit gummed up. Possibly more issues in the linkages under the dash but I hope not! However, it should be straight forward to resolve.
 
When i first got my cab from UK 11 years ago i removed the wiper motor and opened it up and checked the brushes and cleaned and lubricated everything with CRC and they seemed to work better afterwards
 
low and behold it worked today, which was good, because I drove through a heavy tropical shower 😹
 
From time to time I remove the wiper arms from the shafts and I drip some oil off my dipstick onto the protruding shaft at the joint line of the shaft and the housing bush and turn the wipers on (still having the arms off). You may have to drip oil on 6 or 7 times.
Works for me. Preventative maintenance! (Though I have only been doing this for the past 46 years) :)
 
Hi, A similar thing happened with the wipers on my 504, where they stopped intermittently. Turned out the internal arms were fouling on the cardboard glovebox, which had distorted over time! Open the glovebox and check there too! Cheers.
 
neil s said:
Decades ago mine did the same. I think that the grease had seized up.
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Agree. Prior to this, I self-diagnosed and replaced a few wiper motors to little effect. Slow movement. Once they stopped completely, I left it to my mechanic who groped around under the dashboard and regreased all the linkages - presumably not greased since the car left the factory. Obvious but not obvious to me……Works fine now.
 
thanks for tips everbody, I'll be poking around to get some grease in when it cools down, its like a damn furnace at the moment!
 
there are also some electrical contacts in the gearbox which facilitate the park function ,you could check out ,i would be disconnecting the arms from the motor and see if they can be operated by hand ,or if the motor operates without them connected, thereby determining where the problem is PUGS
 
pugwash said:
there are also some electrical contacts in the gearbox which facilitate the park function ,you could check out
Click to expand...
Pugwash, the second part of your post is good advice, but the part I have quoted does not make sense in this situation. Perhaps you are viewing another thread somewhere, or had a few beers ? :spy::cool: 🥸
 
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He means the gearbox in the wiper motor assembly, not the car's transmission.The wiper motor drives through a small reduction gear, with the self-parking circuit controlled by contacts inside the reduction "gearbox."
(Wiper motors have two distinct sections, the round bit like a can is the 12 volt motor, the flatter bit contains the reduction gearbox.)

I'd be greasing the linkages first...
 
in this case I think I've found a possible cause, I put dum dum caulking strip along the rim of the glass rubber to try and temporarily halt water seepage into the bottom corners where it is starting to rust, ( job for next year if/when I can find replacement rubber) and the wiper blade has hit the caulking and dragged some back up the screen which I reckon slowed it to a halt. Once it had made a divot in the strip it seemed to free up. hmmm Found some linkages under the dash with a bit of groping!
 
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