Just went outside in the snow to clear the car off. I saw that there wasn’t much snow on the windshield, so I hit the wipers to clear it off.
They gave one attempt and then stopped.
After cleaning the car off I noticed to my dismay that I can move the wipers by hand quite easily – they move in unison.
When I try to run them from within the car, I just hear the motor whirring, but no wiper movement.
It’s a '95 Saturn.
Did I just break a shear pin or something? How do I fix it?
This just rendered the car useless in all but sunny weather.
First check your fuses. There is a slight chance you might have just blown a fuse. But since there is noise of a motor running that probably isn’t it. If it is the fuses it is incredibly cheap to fix.
There is a chance you loosened you wiper part from the wiper motor and all it needs is to be tightened down again - no expense at all.
There is a chance that you stripped the actual wiper part. If this is the case just replace that. It is a little more expensive than a fuse but not spectacularly so.
Worst case senerio is that you burned out or stripped your wiper motor. Even this is not spectacularly expensive.
My suggestion is to take it by your dealership or Wal-Mart, or Sears and they probably can fix it right up. Usually it is quite minor and very repairable.
Something has broken (or if you’re lucky, popped off, but don’t count on it) in the wiper linkage. You can probably see the situation by removing the cowling at the base of the windshield (after pulling the wiper arms off their spindles). With luck it will be something you can replace or refit from that vantage point. Some repairs may require removing the upper dashboard, inside the car, for access – we’ll hope that’s not the case here.
Based on the danger of not having wipers, coupled with the responses here, I just dropped it off at my corner mechanic to see if he can fix it. I don’t have a garage, so I won’t be able to monkey around under the hood easily.
Right, with one blade moving free it’s a possibility. In this case, the blades moved together, indicating they were firmly on their spindles (where the nut in question is) and connected by part of the linkage. The disconnect has to be between that portion of the linkage and the wiper motor.
Yep, I was going to say a loose nut (I did that when changing the blades and panicked that I had done something REALLY BAD) but with both of them together that would be wrong.
Sounds as though you’ve stripped a gear in the motor. Not really a great deal you can do about it other than to replace the motor - not a major task, fortunately.
No, I’d say you broke them. What happens is that they are frozen to the windshield, so you start them, then they snap at the base. It costs a lot.
It happened to me, and I’d bet money it happened to you. I’m sorry, but always pull your wipers away from the windshield with your hand (like, towards you) before entering your car when it’s frozen out, even if there’s not a lot of snow or ice on the windshield, to make sure they aren’t stuck to the windshield.
It could be a stripped gear in the wiper motor as some have stated. My GF’s Nissan 200SX likes to break a ball cup on a $7 linkage arm every winter. In other words, it could be a few different things. There is certainly no reason to assume it can only be the wiper motor based on what has been described.
The mechanic said it was something about a setscrew being loose and something being bent out of shape. He bent it back in shape, tightened it up, and charged me 55 bucks plus tax. He also gave me a stern warning to always free the blades completely before turning on the wipers.
Considering that he had to open things up and fiddle around for awhile, I figure it was a fair deal. I would have wasted more than 55 bucks of my own time trying to fix it and I wouldn’t have done it quite right. He did echo what many folks have said about the possibility of stripping gears in the motor.
It’s also worthy to mention that you should shut off your wipers when parking the vehicle for a length of time. That way, should snow and ice accumulate and bind the wipers, the motor isn’t trying to break them free or park them.
There’s no set interval. It varies with blade quality, amount of use, and exposure to abrasive material (dust, plant debris, etc.). Repalce them when they get streaky. For most drivers, this will be in the 6-12 month range.
ISTM that wipers on a new car will last for years. Once you change them, they wear out much faster. I don’t know if OEM wipers are that much better or if something else is at work.
When this happened to me, I saw and smelled smoke coming from the steering column. It ended up costing me a few hundred $, IIRC. (A cop was writing me a ticket for parking in front of a driveway that I couldn’t see with all the snow. Instead of debating with her, I tried to move my car ASAP. That didn’t stop her from writing the ticket.)
