As the title says, the wiper system on my rear hatch is dead, not water and no wiper movement.

The first thing I would like to know is how to get the panel off the thing without breaking the fragile plastic.

After that, I need to know how to test to see if the motor works and/or if it is getting power.

Then, last but not least, where does it get it's water from?

Help me please and be gentle, this is my first post. LMBO!!!

 

I bet fuse #33 is blown.

 

No, that one is part of the power seats circuit so it's good.

 

very carefully.

test light on the pigtail with the key on (should be constant hot wire in there somewhere.) have the rear wipers on not int.

I like my Power-probe to test motors, but in a pinch I have a lawn mower battery and use that.

the "water" for the washer comes from the reservoir. And one very long hose. Washer is controlled by the motor (I think it is a 5 wire pigtail) and ultimiutly by the switch on the collum

 

The rear washer has it's own separate pump that is mounted externally on the reservoir. If you look at the reservoir from below the car, you will see a hose coming off the bottom that goes to a small cylinder not far away. That is the rear washer pump.

When I bought my car, the washer line was pulled apart at a fitting that I accessed from one of the rear interior panels. It was doing a good job of filling my spare tire well with washer fluid. :P

 

If both the washer and wiper have stopped working, and it isn't the fuse, my money is on the stalk wiring.

remove the steering wheel shroud and check for power at the connectors there.

 

You guys will have to dumb this way down for me. I need to know WHICH wire to check, like, color. Also, should I be trying to run the wiper with it plugged in? What if the motor is good but the transmission bad? Would that mess up a good motor? How do I get the rear panel stuff apart? One side looks loose (broken) while the other looks tight. Maybe I need to go down to the junk yard and tear one apart.

 

if motor was still good and plugged in but transmission broke, you would be able to hear the motor working.

 

I had to go to the salvage yard today for a fuel pump for a friends car and decided to take rear hatch panel apart while there. Worked pretty good and figured out how to do it a little better for my car.

So I take mine apart today and learned that the water pump works and the wiper is getting power, but I think the wiper motor is dead. When I unplugged the wiper motor, it has 3 wires going to it, and power on 2 of them (guess the other was a ground). However, when plugged in, the motor did nothing. So, I'll go and pull a motor from the junk yard tomorrow. How can I be sure the motor in the jy is good?

On the 3 wires, YELLOW/PURPLE, GREEN/YELLOW and PURPLE/ORANGE.
- On intermit setting, the YELLOW/PURPLE wire had constant power and the GREEN/YELLOW wire had power for about 1 second ever 8 seconds.
- On constant wipe setting, YELLOW/PURPLE wire had constant power and the GREEN/YELLOW wire had constant power.
- Off, neither wire had power. I believe the PURPLE/ORANGE wire is the ground.

I tried to check the motor for ohms. Not sure how to do that put I got zero reading with all the pin combinations.

Any thoughts or info for me?

 

Not sure about what wire to check but this is a picture of the wagons second pump location if that helps.

 

The pump is working, it's the wiper motor I'm having problems with.

 

Mine stopped working but it wasn't the motor that failed. I pulled the cover and noticed the motor was pretty hot. If it's the shaft that seizes up it's still using power trying to get to the "Park" position so it can burn itself out. That and run the battery down if it doesn't blow the fuse.

What happened to mine was the shaft seized inside the sleeve it runs through from the inside of the body to the outside. I ended up removing the assembly and taking it apart. It's pretty straight forward to disassemble. The only thing that was a bit tricky was a "C" clip at the end of the shaft you have to pry out to slide the shaft out. On mine I used PB Blaster, a torch (sparingly) and a lot of back and forth work to get them apart. I ran a drill bit through the sleeve (aluminum) by hand to clean it out and remove the corrosion and wire brushed the steel shaft of the wiper motor. Reassembled with liberal amounts of axle bearing grease (Mobil 1) and used a little silicone sealant at the joint just under where the wiper arm attaches to the shaft.

A few months later my fronts started to run slower than they should and I ended up pulling the whole wiper transmission from the front and overhauling both of them in the same way. It's one of the easier transmissions I've ever pulled and it saves you from replacing a perfectly good motor and still having a slow or no wipe complaint !!

I was really happy with the outcome and the fronts sped up noticeably. It's been a year and a half and everything is still working fine with the old motors. I kept the new rear motor just in case.

I had pictures of the procedure but lost them with a thumb drive crash, sorry.