12-21-2018, 08:25 PM
This is the sort of failure which is unlikely to happen, other than at the most inopportune time.
My failure was mid rainstorm, at 70mph, interstate, with no Nearby exits or pull offs or overpasses. The wipers failed in the 12:00 position
Usually I keep the windshield waxed, Which would have made continuing to drive especially at highway speeds where the beads of water fly up the windshield, relatively simple, but I've been a slacker in this department lately.
Luckily there was that small area unwiped by the wipers down low which still had the water bead enough that I could see, slightly. I slowed down to 55 or so and kept going until I could safely pull over somewhere protected.
When i finally got to bridge underpass, out of the rain, I checked the glass fuse, which appeared good, then I bridged the terminals anyway with the a binder clip, and no difference.
Pop the hood, put my finger on the motor body and i can feel it buzzing, and getting an ear closer, when all the traffic passed, i could hear the gears grinding inside.
I manually moved the wipers and the grinding continued and got louder, but they caught own then up and stopped in the same spot, stalled at 12:00 again.
Yep, definitely the gears were stripped. I Unplugged the electrical connector, as the contacts inside were going to keep the motor spinning until the main gear reached the spot that would indicate the wipers were in the down position.
I had some car wax with me, so I squeegeed the window, applied it, laughed at the thought of haze forming in 100% humidity, wiped it off and continued on, with no further major visibility issues. I was kind of surprised that the water beaded as nicely as it did without the wax drying to a haze then being wiped off, but it did.
So then comes the replacement part game.
Goto rock Auto, see a few part numbers, they are all around 50$. I see no replacement gears to simply replace the stripped gear.
I plug in the Rock Auto part product parts numbers and find similar prices all over the net for the same brands. The local AP stores are nearly double the price, and they all would have had to order it anyway.
RockAuto also Lists the OE part number, and I C&P this into the address bar, and now Amazon and Ebay are showing hundreds of hits, with prices varying from 26$, to 190$.
I can see No obvious differences between these parts, none claim to be built to any higher standard, and I did not bother removing my 30 year old broken motor to really get a better idea of what to look for. I wound up ordering a 32$ part from Amazon with free shipping and it arrived today, and then I removed the original failed motor.
There are a few minor visible exterior differences, amd the new motor has a build date of September of 2018! No country of origin though.
Dodge actually did a good design of mounting the wiper motor isolated by rubber bushings. The failure seems to be due to whatever grease they used, which seems like it was white lithium grease, having dried out.
There is a brass worm gear on the motor's rshaft, which spins a plastic gear which directly spins the shaft and lever which moves the wiper arms. This plastic gear has the angled grooves to accept the brass worm gear. the plastic was well worn and stripped badly in the one area. The bushing at the far end of the brass worm gear was also sloppy. This bushing has a receptacle for a Flat head screwdriver on the exterior. If someone were so inclined, they could remove this bushing, and inject fresh grease into this area, and likely prolong the lifespan of the original motor, but full disassembly is required and injecting grease effectively would not be easy. The backing plate which allows access to the worm and plastic gears are riveted on, and needed to be drilled so I could see what it looked like inside. Even if I could buy the replacement gear, and replace it, i would have to drill and tap the body to close it back up.
The new motor has a hole where the original had this threaded bushing to accept the end of the rotor. This is not confidence inspiring regarding the quality of the new motor.
The brushes of the old motor had Plenty of life left in them, but simply replacing the plastic gear which stripped, even if I could find a suitable replacemet part, would not be simple.
I've not installed the new motor yet Seems that open hole at the motors rotor should be protected from mositure ingress, or allowing the grease they installed to degell, drain and become ineffective. Some of the wiring appears as if it can be protected better.
Anyway I'll update this with photos a bit later once I bust out the real camera get some unblurry photos, and upload them, Right now some Ospho is doing its thing to the rust on the steel mounting plate which holds the motor suspended in rubber. The wiper valance also needs some touching up while i have everything apart.
The two main takeways of this post are to wax your windshield regularly, so that the water beads an one can still easily see though the windshield should the wipers fail during the mother of all rainstorms. I used to use rainX, and i hear Aquapel is as good, and lasts longer. The reduced friction of the wipers on waxed smooth windshield should also cause less stress to the wiper motor gears, extending their life.
Takeaway number 2 is that one should use RockAuto to find not only the replacement of the failed product that they offer, but to look for the OE part number, and then post that number into a search engine, I saved some 20$ by doing so, but of course the product quality of what I got is a bit suspect, but that could be true of the more expensive part as well.
This part was used for some 13 model years through many chrysler products, Junkyard replacement parts are certanily an option too, but the newest model year this part was used was 1993. so anyjunkyard part might be on its way to failure too, even if the original part is likely made well better tha nwhat is available today, as today, autoparts in general, are junk designed to fail in short order
.
I do not think this failure could have easily been prevented, or delayed by a significant amount of time, the thing is 30 years old and the lubricant was the consistency of blue cheese. If I did not have any car wax, or something to apply to make the water bead from my windshield, I could NOt have safely continued driving, and would have had to remain put on the side of the highway until it stopped raining several hours later, which would have sucked.
My failure was mid rainstorm, at 70mph, interstate, with no Nearby exits or pull offs or overpasses. The wipers failed in the 12:00 position
Usually I keep the windshield waxed, Which would have made continuing to drive especially at highway speeds where the beads of water fly up the windshield, relatively simple, but I've been a slacker in this department lately.
Luckily there was that small area unwiped by the wipers down low which still had the water bead enough that I could see, slightly. I slowed down to 55 or so and kept going until I could safely pull over somewhere protected.
When i finally got to bridge underpass, out of the rain, I checked the glass fuse, which appeared good, then I bridged the terminals anyway with the a binder clip, and no difference.
Pop the hood, put my finger on the motor body and i can feel it buzzing, and getting an ear closer, when all the traffic passed, i could hear the gears grinding inside.
I manually moved the wipers and the grinding continued and got louder, but they caught own then up and stopped in the same spot, stalled at 12:00 again.
Yep, definitely the gears were stripped. I Unplugged the electrical connector, as the contacts inside were going to keep the motor spinning until the main gear reached the spot that would indicate the wipers were in the down position.
I had some car wax with me, so I squeegeed the window, applied it, laughed at the thought of haze forming in 100% humidity, wiped it off and continued on, with no further major visibility issues. I was kind of surprised that the water beaded as nicely as it did without the wax drying to a haze then being wiped off, but it did.
So then comes the replacement part game.
Goto rock Auto, see a few part numbers, they are all around 50$. I see no replacement gears to simply replace the stripped gear.
I plug in the Rock Auto part product parts numbers and find similar prices all over the net for the same brands. The local AP stores are nearly double the price, and they all would have had to order it anyway.
RockAuto also Lists the OE part number, and I C&P this into the address bar, and now Amazon and Ebay are showing hundreds of hits, with prices varying from 26$, to 190$.
I can see No obvious differences between these parts, none claim to be built to any higher standard, and I did not bother removing my 30 year old broken motor to really get a better idea of what to look for. I wound up ordering a 32$ part from Amazon with free shipping and it arrived today, and then I removed the original failed motor.
There are a few minor visible exterior differences, amd the new motor has a build date of September of 2018! No country of origin though.
Dodge actually did a good design of mounting the wiper motor isolated by rubber bushings. The failure seems to be due to whatever grease they used, which seems like it was white lithium grease, having dried out.
There is a brass worm gear on the motor's rshaft, which spins a plastic gear which directly spins the shaft and lever which moves the wiper arms. This plastic gear has the angled grooves to accept the brass worm gear. the plastic was well worn and stripped badly in the one area. The bushing at the far end of the brass worm gear was also sloppy. This bushing has a receptacle for a Flat head screwdriver on the exterior. If someone were so inclined, they could remove this bushing, and inject fresh grease into this area, and likely prolong the lifespan of the original motor, but full disassembly is required and injecting grease effectively would not be easy. The backing plate which allows access to the worm and plastic gears are riveted on, and needed to be drilled so I could see what it looked like inside. Even if I could buy the replacement gear, and replace it, i would have to drill and tap the body to close it back up.
The new motor has a hole where the original had this threaded bushing to accept the end of the rotor. This is not confidence inspiring regarding the quality of the new motor.
The brushes of the old motor had Plenty of life left in them, but simply replacing the plastic gear which stripped, even if I could find a suitable replacemet part, would not be simple.
I've not installed the new motor yet Seems that open hole at the motors rotor should be protected from mositure ingress, or allowing the grease they installed to degell, drain and become ineffective. Some of the wiring appears as if it can be protected better.
Anyway I'll update this with photos a bit later once I bust out the real camera get some unblurry photos, and upload them, Right now some Ospho is doing its thing to the rust on the steel mounting plate which holds the motor suspended in rubber. The wiper valance also needs some touching up while i have everything apart.
The two main takeways of this post are to wax your windshield regularly, so that the water beads an one can still easily see though the windshield should the wipers fail during the mother of all rainstorms. I used to use rainX, and i hear Aquapel is as good, and lasts longer. The reduced friction of the wipers on waxed smooth windshield should also cause less stress to the wiper motor gears, extending their life.
Takeaway number 2 is that one should use RockAuto to find not only the replacement of the failed product that they offer, but to look for the OE part number, and then post that number into a search engine, I saved some 20$ by doing so, but of course the product quality of what I got is a bit suspect, but that could be true of the more expensive part as well.
This part was used for some 13 model years through many chrysler products, Junkyard replacement parts are certanily an option too, but the newest model year this part was used was 1993. so anyjunkyard part might be on its way to failure too, even if the original part is likely made well better tha nwhat is available today, as today, autoparts in general, are junk designed to fail in short order
.
I do not think this failure could have easily been prevented, or delayed by a significant amount of time, the thing is 30 years old and the lubricant was the consistency of blue cheese. If I did not have any car wax, or something to apply to make the water bead from my windshield, I could NOt have safely continued driving, and would have had to remain put on the side of the highway until it stopped raining several hours later, which would have sucked.
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Thanks for the RainX info. That's my "one new thing" I learned today. I wonder if when I take off the Safari's bug shield on the hood and remove the 100ys worth of green algae growing under it if a good application of RainX will slow it's regrowth. 'Cuz maybe it will not stick? 
with a lot of green algae growing on 'em. 
I AM CRAZY 
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