rear wiper motor shaft seized

[bgambino]

I think mine is seized due to corrosion....96 OB wagon

Anyone know the best way to fix it?

Motor is/was fine...switch was on for a while and when I was taking the motor out it was hot---hope it did not burn up....i would have thought there would be a thermal overload switch built in.

I have some PB blaster on it...what next? A torch?

[dhise]

pb blaster worked for my old loyale as well. When you free it up, get some grease on there to keep it corrosion free!

[bheinen74]

i got mine going with wd-40

[The Beast I Drive]

If you can't get it working again I have a good one from a '97 OB i could sell ya.

-Bill

[Chip]

It's not that hard a job removing the motor assembly and fixing it.

 

You first need to remove the little plastic cover where the wiper arm hinges. That will reveal a small nut..(8mm ?) Remove that and take off the wiper arm. You'll then need to remove the big nut,(17mm ?), which resides under a large plastic cover...up against the glass.

Once that's done, the rest is accomplished from inside the hatch.

 

Remove all the trim from inside the hatch....the hard plastic trim up near the glass and the "mouse fur" covered trim below. There are no visible screws on the hard plastic trim. Just yank real hard and it'll come off.

Once everything is off, look up inside to find the wiring harness and disconnect it. You'll then need a 10mm box end wrench to remove the 3 or 4 bolts holding the motor assembly in place. Once they're removed, the entire thing should come off.

In order to free the shaft, you're going to have to do some whacking. Soak the shaft the best you can with pb blaster or liquid wrench for a while. On the back of the assembly, you'll see several philip head screws. Remove those to get the back off the assembly. You'll find the unit is filled with grease.

Now the fun begins. To be able to remove and "de-rust" the shaft, you'll first have to remove the small circlip around the shaft...not far from the threaded end where the 8mm nut was. Once that's off, you'll probably have to whack on the end of the shaft to get it out. You don't want to whack right on the threads cause you'll screw them up,(like I did), so put the 8mm nut back on and whack on that.

With a bit of sweat, whacking and a few choice swear words, the shaft should come out.

Once out, take some sandpaper and polish the bejesus out of it. Do the same to the inside of the hole where it turns,(rolled up sandpaper works well).

Before re-assembling, use a real good synthetic grease on the shaft,(caliper grease works well). Grease it up good and re-assemble to whole thing....don't forget the circlip.

...and like they say.....Assembly is the reverse of dis-assembly.