Quote:
Originally Posted by S124300
There were two types of plastic slip cover on the arm connection to the motor unit. An early type with an inspection hole and flap and the superceding type that does not have the hole and flap.
The 'clamshell' metal head on the gear unit can only be removed with the whole gearhead mechanism out of the car. The 'clamshell' is plastic and supposedly removable in situ on the second facelift cars - those with an inset grille.
Stiff and slow wiping will be down to dried up grease - it turns to hard wax - inside the gearhead. I had to strip and re-grease a 1992 wiper unit about 5 years ago to cure that. A short term fix is a few drops of 2 in 1 oil on the metal rod that the wiper arm bolts to.
I stopped the wiper when it was vertical on the screen, lifted off the plastic slip cover, slipped a rag underneath to protect the glass and oiled the shaft lightly.
The car I worked on had a Bosch motor and gear unit, although the spare motor we bought turned out be an SWF item.
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What kind of grease? I just disassembled one. The factory grease was not dried up; it was dingy and old looking, but still greasy. Wasn't very much of it though. I have a theory that they're not supposed to be greased to death, just a little in the right place is sufficient. I didn't clean the old grease out because it was still pretty greasy, not waxy or gummy. Instead I redistributed it and added a little bit of MB Gleitpaste to the plastic teeth. Not sure whether that particular grease is appropriate for the job, but with all the talk about how great that stuff is I thought I'd try it on the wiper gear.
If the wiper slows down it could be from friction with the pistoning rod inside the clamshell. I had this trouble once driving through a blizzard. I think the combination of the rod being dry and the cold caused this condition. A little transmission fluid on the rod fixed it. This leads me to believe that it's not necessarily the gear inside that causes the problem, but the stiction with the rod that overwhelms the gear inside that leads to stripped teeth. Old grease on the gear exacerbates the issue.