Alright so I have the "wacky / mind of their own windshield wipers." It's been this way since I bought the car, and When I went to test drive it before I bought it the wipers stayed on continuously. It was ok though, because I knew the problem.

I have cleaned out all the udders, and as many other people have noticed, that sure is a poor design! It makes me sick thinking of how my wiper motor was probably partially submerged in water...This car is a DD and it has seen rain about 5 times since I bought it. Every time it rained the wipers would go to acting crazy, and after a day or so (I am assuming everything dried out) they went back to normal. So this past thursday they got wet again, and now they won't return to normal. I removed everything and the motor and all, and I removed the cover to the circuit board on the back of the motor. Inside I found water droplets and residual moisture, and I even got some water to come out of the opening to the motor housing. I blew everything out with an air hose and then used a hair dryer to further dry it up. I re-sealed the cover to the circuit board and put everything back together.

As we all know, the wipers will seat on the little humps when they are in the off position. When you turn them on, they will rise up a couple of inches, and then begin wiping from there. After you turn them off, they will stop in that position a couple inches above the humps and in a few seconds, go back down to their resting (off) position, on the humps.

I have cleaned all the udders and made the necessary repairs to keep this crap from happening again, and everything has gone back to normal except for one thing. The wipers work fine from the position they move to when you turn them on. All functions work, delay, fast mode, and slow mode. But when you turn them off, they stop at the position above the little humps. In other words they won't completely go down. I thought about just pulling the arms up off of the shafts and repositioning them to where they are on the humps, but told myself this probably wasn't a good idea just in case they ever decided to try to go down the extra few inches to seat. That would probably strip some gears or mess some things up. I'm not gonna do that...

So I figured I would let them dry for another day or two and see if they will settle then. Otherwise, I guess I'll be buying a new motor, or fixing whatever you guys might suggest. If there is a certain part in that circuit board that controls the wipers to put them in to the resting mode, maybe I could fix that. I guess if not, Where can I get a wiper motor for the best price and what do they cost? This is a very important fix for me because I will be driving in the rain and I need my wipers! Thanks.

 

bump.....

 

Sounds like when you re-attatched the wiper mechanism, you didn't index it properly.
Turn the wipers on, when they hit their highest point, mark that position on the windshield with a grease pencil(or something similiar). If that point isn't almost exactly at the edge of the windsheild, then you have the wiper arms in the wrong position. Turn them off, let them go to their lowest point, take the wiper arms off, then re-attatch the arms so that they rest on the bump stops. Turn wipers on and make sure the travel is right, and that they return to the bump stops.
May take a couple trys to get them just right. Ask me how I know.
Good luck, and let us know how the fix comes out.

P.S.
You can get a re-built wiper motor from Autozone for about 40 bucks. This will solve the crazy wiper problem for good.
Also, search my posts for the wiper udder mod. This will keep your udders clear, and your motor dry.

 

mine went crazy yesterday... i dont get how one can reach the udders??? are my paws to big?

 

I give - what are the udders?

 

Bump for the OP. Some genius here has an answer. G/L

something you NEED to squeeze!!! Do a search and pm me if you can't find the answer. Honestly it is improtant maintenece

 

Maites - you can get to the ones under the wipers easily if you remove the wiper motor and its transmission assembly. I took me about an hour to do what is in my original post. I did the first two without taking it out, and then I noticed the third which is just about imposible to get to without removing the motor.

sneakelman - I am absolutely certain the arms are in the right position. This problem with them not seating correctly was happening before I took them off, when they worked fine the day before. I did get the utters fixed up to where they WILL NOT be holding any more water or any thing else for that matter. I didn't know about the rebuilt unit at auto zone...I'll have to check that out if I can't get this cleared up..Let me see if I can explain this better:

When you turn your wipers on, they move from their resting position to a spot a little higher on the windshield for a brief second, stop, and then start wiping. When you turn them off, they stop at that same spot for a brief second, and then they go down a little further back to their resting position on the little humps. Do you understand what I mean?

 

I know your thread is dated but I just started having the same issue on my '01. The wipers work correctly all the time EXCEPT for when you turn them off and they don't make the short drop back from the OFF position to the resting position on the bump stops. Were you able to correct that issue? If so, how?

 

 

the circuit board in the wiper motor could be cracked ????

 

The issue at hand: The wipers will not "park" on the bump stops when the wiper switch on the steering wheel stalk is in the OFF position. All other wiper operations work correctly.

Pounder - At this point, anything is a possibility, thank you for the suggestion. I found an excellent 30 minute YouTube video on how to replace the wiper motor and then recalibrate the wipers:


The video deals with my specific issue at several locations in the video. They are:

21:15 Mentions the required gap size between the two wiper assembly tabs that allow the wipers to "park"
22:38 Park position operation
23:44 to 24:21 Tab alignment discussion relating to wiper park operation

 

Looks like you found your own answer. Wipers not parking is probably not the pulse board. The pulse board causes wacky intermittent operations, sometimes wipers work and sometimes not. It's more likely you need to calibrate the parts connected to the wiper motor underneath the cowl.