Windshield Wiper issues

[Ratbat]

Last night my Wipers started exhibiting some strange behavior. They would catch at the full open position and not return unless I gave them a little bump. They were going a bit past the normal stopping point and catching there. I opened up my trunk and got to the motor. It all seems to work fine as long as I keep a finger on the glass to keep them from going too far. Is it possible that there is a loose nut on the armature or do ya'll think the motor is going bad? I've never seen this particular issue before. In the past the motor would just burn out and I would replace it. The motor does move a fraction while making the return to closed position. Any help or experience is much appreciated. BTW 1969 Beetle is my poison of choice.

[Marc]

`68/`69 Beetle had the absolute WORST wipers of any VW ever made. They increased the diameter of the pivot shafts and bushings and thought that they could get away with deleting the "tail" on the cross-link which prevented over-centering on the older cars...my first new Bug was a `69, and it had troubles before it was even a year old here in Seattle. It's not just annoying, it can be life-threatening when you're overtaking a semi and the wipers lock up and blow their fuse at 70 MPH when you hit his bow-wave.
The BEST solution is to fit a complete wiper assembly from a `70/`71 (Standard or Super) with the beefier pivots. They're electrically identical; the late pivots are bigger in diameter so you have to slice their grommets apart with a razor blade and sandwich them together at the cowl. This holds the frame in place just fine, with no need for the sheetmetal "bale" which supported the pre`70 motor. The other option is to enlarge the holes in the cowl to accept intact late grommets, but then you have to furnish an extra means of support since the pre`70 bale won't work with the late round motor.

You can roll down the window and hold a finger where the driver's side blade taps it at full sweep so it can't overtravel, but that gets pretty miserable in a hurry. The low-buck solution is to trim a scrap of sheetmetal to the shape of the lower left corner of the windshield glass, with a ledge bent over at 90° for the wiper blade to slap against on the downstroke. Poke that into the windshield seal to take the place of your finger, and the linkage won't be able to overcenter and jam up. A slightly more sophisticated approach would be to weld/braze an extension onto the cross-link, making it resemble the `65-`67 part, that will bang against the pivot to limit the travel. It'll clank when running at high speed on a wet w'shield, but at least the wipers will keep working.


`72-up Beetle/`72-only Super wiper assemblies are similar, but the wiring of the park circuit was altered when they went to the column-mounted switch. You can use any Beetle mechanism from `70-`78 (as well as `71/`72 Super) but the wiring is simplest if you stick with the `70/`71 motor.

[Ratbat]

Thanks! That gives me a couple of ideas to look into for immediate and long term solutions. Rainy season is starting early here so I can utilize both those ideas.

[sagaboy]

It is a simple solution to your problem, I had the same problem and this is what I did by welding a metal stopper piece to the end part of where the wiper mechanism reaches the stop part.
1. Remove the entire wiper assembly (without the wiper blade) connect a 12v to the wiper motor n note where the wiper arm mechanism reaches before its return journey.... Thats where you need to arc solder, or brass solder with a portable canister gas butane gun a piece of metal so that the arm stop 2mm earlier it's return journey. The reason are due to the end stopper metal being worn off hence the arm moved further past the windshield.