Ok so this is what happened …it was -22 and had freezing drizzle after cleaning the car off and scraping the ice an windshield clean I turned on my wipers an the driver side wasn’t touching the windshield properly so after a few attempts of making sure there was no ice build up around the joint I tried pushing down on the wiper arm to see if that would help…I heard a snap at the knuckle joint where the arm meets the joint… the motor still works good it still moves the arm but its really sloppy an can be moved with just a slight pull…will this be an expensive fix? been crying over how stupid I am…so please don’t make me feel worse…
What’s the year/make/model. You’ll probably just need a new arm. You probably bent it when you pushed down on it.
its a 2003 Saturn ion
Looks like they’re about $30 on the internet.
I’d confirm that that’s what’s broken before you buy a new one though. Check for buckled metal somewhere along it to see if that’s why it’s not coming down all the way. As opposed to, say, ice still lodged in there or a broken spring. Maybe it came up off the spline a little bit or even worse, maybe you broke something with the mounts, linkage or transmission.
The part of the wiper that bolts to the car is pot metal, or zinc die cast, and is very soft. What has probably happened is you have stripped the splines in the pot metal piece. The pot metal may be stuck in the steel splines where it attaches to the vehicle so you may have to take a wire brush and clean out the splines or maybe more like a steel pick to clean them out and then reattach a new wiper arm.
thank you for all the info…it is definitely not the arm itself but more like inside where the joint is…