slow windscreen wiper

Hi Guys and girls.
I picked up my A2 a couple of weeks ago and have thought the wipers were a tad slow. Ive had bigger issues with the car like the timing belt, so i left it for a while. However i decided yesterday to have a look. I noticed straight away thet the scuttle drain tube is missing, so it must have been blocked at some point because its fairly conclusive that water has been running through where the wiper spidles come through the scuttle.
After a bit of a fight, i got the wiper mech out of the engine bay. I removed the linkage from the motor to the main spindle and there was my problem, the 2 spidles were almost seized. So i striped them both out, cleaned them up, loaded the spindles with Anti Seize grease, and now they're magnificent.
While i was there, i also took the black plastic peice off of the back of the motor (as i looked up another thread about wipers, and a cause of bad running is a bad earth) and was surprised at how much of a small area the earth has to make a connection. However, i cleaned all the terminals, even though they were ok, and used Vaseline on them too, to stop corrosion.
All back together and the wiper works great now.

Russell,
Thanks for posting this. My A2 has the same slow wiper problem as yours. The wiper is slow on normal setting and doesn't speed up at all on the fast setting, so I suspect it is heading for seizing up, too. (The car has spent almost all its life in Yorkshire and Lancashire, so the wiper has had a lot of use, ho ho!) I looked at the wiper mech and couldn't even see how it was attached to the car let alone work out how to remove it. Can you give me some hints, please? I realise you said it was a bit of a fight so not expecting it to be easy, but can't see where to start!

No problem.
First off remove the wiper arm, then the plastic scuttle. You will then have access to the two screws holding the HVAC inlet to the scuttle. You also have to take out the other 3 fixings holding the rest of the HVAC inlet to the fire wall, then you can pull the whole thing over to the right (as your looking in the engine bay)
Once thats done, unplug the wiper motor wiring, the loom is fixed to the wiper mech along its flank, just pull these out as they are only 'fur trees'.
The wiper mech itself is held in with 4 fixings. Two that mount to the fire wall, and two that mount to the underside of the scuttle, upwards. Remove these and then let the wrestle begin. i ended up kind of spinning it around the timing belt cover, i made that sound easy, its a bit tricky. You dont have to be too heavy handed, just have patients and it will come out. When it has, remember how you did it because refitting it the reverse of removal.

Hope this helps.

russell22dc said:

No problem.
First off remove the wiper arm, then the plastic scuttle. You will then have access to the two screws holding the HVAC inlet to the scuttle. You also have to take out the other 3 fixings holding the rest of the HVAC inlet to the fire wall, then you can pull the whole thing over to the right (as your looking in the engine bay)
Once thats done, unplug the wiper motor wiring, the loom is fixed to the wiper mech along its flank, just pull these out as they are only 'fur trees'.
The wiper mech itself is held in with 4 fixings. Two that mount to the fire wall, and two that mount to the underside of the scuttle, upwards. Remove these and then let the wrestle begin. i ended up kind of spinning it around the timing belt cover, i made that sound easy, its a bit tricky. You dont have to be too heavy handed, just have patients and it will come out. When it has, remember how you did it because refitting it the reverse of removal.

Hope this helps.

Click to expand...

Thank you very much!