hey,

this is a repost of something i did earlier. hope nobody's offended...

tonger

Driving in the rain one day I noticed that the driver's side wiper wasn't even contacting the windshield with the wiper in the near vertical position. The nut retaining the wiper arm on the post had worked itself loose and essentially stripped the contact between the wiper arm and the post. Retorquing the nut did not fix the problem. I then tried to gently bend the wiper arm to generate more force against the windshield which did not work well either. This is because the lost material between the wiper arm and post caused the arm to sit in a slightly tilted alignment on the post resulting in an uneven wiper arc.

Hey,

I'm sorry to say that the fix required replacing the entire windshield washer frame/gear assembly (part $165) and driver's side wiper arm (part $65) because there is no way to replace just the washer post. The work isn't that hard and took about 1.5 hrs as outlined in the Haynes manual. The key to the whole thing is maintaining the alignment between the motor and the wiper gear which is not indexed. Otherwise your wipers will not rest in the proper position when turned off.

If I were you, my approach to the problem would be the following (also in the order of ascending cost).

1. Change wiper blades. Sounds like you've already done this. I use Bosch micro-edge with good result.

2. Retorque the nut retaining the wiper arm to the wiper post. A little lock-tight here wouldn't hurt.

3. Replace the wiper arm. This is retained by just one nut and is a 5 min fix. Note that the inner mating surface of a new wiper arm is smooth and the small "machined appearrance" of the contact surface of the old wiper arm results from press fitting the new arm on the post with the retaining nut.

4. Replace the wiper frame. This is located below a plastic cover and is retained by two bolts and a third fitting. The key here is to maintain the indexing between the motor and the wiper frame so that the alignment is preserved after changing the motor onto the new frame. I scribed marks on the old frame. Be careful about turning the shaft of the motor in order to remove it from the old frame. If the alignment is lost, then the wiper motor can be cycled on/off to determine the "off/resting" position of the motor shaft.

Hope this helps. My wipers are fine now, $250 later.

Tonger