My wipers work, but not normally.
After reading several posts on the subject, I suspect the motor.
Where is it mounted and what do I need for its removal?
Any useful comments and suggestions will be much appreciated.

 

The motor and wiper links are under a 2-piece cowl louver assy.

Remove the wiper arms, louver assy to expose the motor. There might be a couple of plastic buttons holding the louvers onto the chassis.

 

Thanks for your very useful info.
My wipers don't park where they should, nor they work on intermittent.
Given those symptoms, am I on the right track with the motor, or the problem is rather with the controlling switch (on the steering column)?
Or I should suspect both?

 

Check that the wiper motor has a good ground connection, this is the White/Black wire.

Check for power as follows:

White/Black wires are ground wires.

Check these wires between ground.

Blue wire has 12V with ign switch on.

Blue/Black wire has 12V with ign switch on and wiper at low speed. If wiper set to intermediate speed this wire will have power every 1 to 10 seconds.

Blue/Yellow wire has 12V power unless wiper is at the stop position.

Blue/Orange has 12V at high speed.

Check between Blue and Blue/Yellow wires, they have continuity unless wiper is in the part position.

Yes, the controls on on the steering column. There are a couple of relays in the control system that might go bad.

 

Many thanks for your prompt and detailed reply!
Will do tests as instructed and post the results.

 

By removing the motor ***'y (easy) and opening up the plastic cover
(3 Torx screws, 1 broke during process, corrosion), I found inside a
PC board with 2 contacts facing each other.

A flexible blade (a mini-wiper itself controlled by a tiny cam) was broken.
I soldered the blade (not easy) to its other half mounted on the PCB.
My wipers are working now as they should: I regained the intermittent mode
and they also park correctly.

The entire job took me 2 hours and $0.00.

By soldering that blade, some of its flexibility was lost and I wouldn't be surprised
if one day it'll break again. But who's perfect?

 

Great job!

Thanks for getting back with the fix and how you did it.

 

Kaddo, you're right about the repair not lasting forever. I did the same repair on my Camry about 4 years, and it worked fine until this morning. It's frustrating that there's no rebuild kit available from the Toyota dealer.

 

Hey all, I found this forum (thankfully) after a less than exhaustive search lead me to believe that I needed a new wiper switch. I paid $40 for a new wiper selector switch from ebay and when it came in, of course it didn't work. So off to the web again and I found this forum. So I took off the wrong cover first. I tried to remove the plastic cover of the motor itself. When it wouldn't come off, I started to look at the other plastic cover.

I though someone could benefit from some pictures, so they are attached.

When I took the right cover off, it exposes a white teflon gear, and laying on top of that gear was this metal tab that was talked about earlier in this thread. It has two electrical contacts on one end and is broken on the other end. It's about maybe an inch long and about 3/16" wide. Two guys here said that they soldered it on and it lasted for a few years then breaking again. I decided to try J.B.Weld instead. You can see in the pics the J.B.Weld blob holding it on. I was able to turn the green wheel until the bracket pulls the tab firmly up against the metal that it broke from, making the electrical continuity needed to complete the circuit.

It worked perfect and cost me $0 for the fix and $40 for the mistake.

Thanks very much everyone for adding to this thread, it really helped me once I found it.

Wayne

 

Glad to see you had it fixed, too.
If epoxy based, I wonder how J.B.Weld can be a good a conductor.
But as long as it's working...
My soldering job is still holding, 2 years since the fix, exactly.
I certainly didn't expect to last that long.
Trying to avoid the intermittent mode also helped, it seems.