Replace Wiper Motor
 

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.

Wipers - Fixed!
 

By removing the motor ass'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 is correct
 

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.

My fix for this problsm
 

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.

Great post, thanks!

A small adjustment needed
 

Kaddo,

Yea, jb weld isn't much of a conductor and I thought I had it touching metal to metal while it was curing. I checked it after hardening and alas, there was no continuity with my meter. So I took a very short piece of jumper wire and soldered it to the bracket and the other end to the tab that's jb welded on. The wire is small and is out of the way of everything and it provides continuity across the open caused by the epoxy. I just wanted to see if the jb weld might hold it together maybe longer than soldering. We'll see.

Wayne

Yeah, it's what I was afraid of.
Good idea that jumper, though.

My repair method
 

I don't think conductive epoxy has enough conductivity to work properly. Also, conductive epoxies don't have the strength that non-conductive epoxies have. I did my repair (which lasted about 4 yrs in rainy Massachusetts) by soldering the broken spring contact together with a splint made out of part of a plated hard copper spade lug terminal that I cut down to a simple rectangular shape. The complete repair had the two pieces of the original spring contact butted together end-to-end with the splint overlapping the two pieces and bridging across the butt. Soldering the whole assembly together was a tricky multistep process because I had to use tweezers to hold everything in the proper position while soldering.

That was the method I also used, exactly.
Now, a bonus reading about your experience.
It means there is hope for at least 2 more years on the life of my switch.
Thanks for the info!

Repairs described above are accurate. Almost every time the Camry wiper motor is the culprit when intermittent and park aren't working correctly. The pics above are the key to solution. Once motor is out, repair only takes a few minutes. Save yourself about $100. I first soldered the broken armature, overlapping the broken metal by a fraction of an inch. Added a little extra solder to fill the void. Then, I carefully coated/caked the repair with JB Epoxy but not enough to interfere with moving parts. I let set for one hour in sunlight to cure. Reassembled and VOILA! Works perfect. Intermittents work & parks correctly. CAUTION - prevent damage - let the motor cycle several times and turn off before attaching the wiper arms. THEN reattach them where you want them to park. Thanks everyone above who posted the solution.

Yay!
 

Yay! I came here and used this info to fix my wiper motor. It worked! Cost: $0 Time: good portion of a day

Still going . . .
 

Well, it's been a year since i fixed my wipers using JB Weld and a jumper wire and still going strong, even here in rainy Oregon where they really get a workout. I'm really glad to hear from others who are finding and making use of this thread.

Wayne

Wipers have only 1 speed
 

I just replaced my wiper motor... thanks for all the info here. I tested the speeds and everything worked fine until I put it in place and tightened everything up. My problem is now it only works at 1 speed whether I have it a hi or lo speed. The intermittent works also. Anybody got any thoughts to my problem.

Year and model of Camry such as CE, LE, XLE?

What symptoms caused the replacement motor to be installed?

Any links/information/part number/vendor on the replacement motor used?

Its a 98 Toyota camry 4 cylinder 2.2L Part #43-2004. The wipers just stopped working and we checked the circuit and we had power at the plug on all the wiper speeds, so I replaced the motor. It worked at all the speeds until I tightened things up

98 camry Wipers quit working so I checked for power at the plug. I had power at all speed settings. I figured it was the motor so I replaced it. I plugged in the new one and it worked at all settings. When I tightened it up it works but it only has 1 speed whether it is at high or lo setting. Intermittent works also. It is a 4 cylinder Part # of motor is 43-2004