Slow wipers
Posted: Sun Oct 12, 2014 9:25 pm
I have noted over time on the forum people speaking about things electrical within their older Subaru's operating slower than what they were supposed to.
Such things as electric windows I think were mentioned.
I have noted over time the wipers on the MY have been moving slower and slower so I was going to look at the wiring including connection points etc.
I have had the panel off the car that sits under the wiper blades and runs across the car, below the windscreen as I was going to start the cars repaint with practicing on this panel.
Today, I decided to put this panel back on so I could look at getting the car to the panel beaters to sort out the holes in the roof from the screw on roof rack rails but before doing this I decided to dismantle and lube up the wiper linkages. There are the shafts for each wiper arm and a number of ball joints.
I pulled these apart, cleaned everything, lubed things up (used bearing grease cause that's what I had) and put it all together again. Everything was dry and I could feel a bit of resistance especially in the wiper arm shafts.
The end result is, the wipers now go at least twice as fast as they previously did.
I would suggest to everyone to look at doing this work if they are experiencing wiper speed issues.
Note - where the wiper arm shafts go into the plastic housings they are held in place with what appeared to be a circlip. The thing I found with the 82 model MY is the circlips are not made of spring steel as I expected. The clips seem to be made from simple mild steel so they bend very easily. I suggest being carful in removing them and putting them back on as I imagine these clips wouldn't be too hard to break.
In all, a very worthwhile job done.
Such things as electric windows I think were mentioned.
I have noted over time the wipers on the MY have been moving slower and slower so I was going to look at the wiring including connection points etc.
I have had the panel off the car that sits under the wiper blades and runs across the car, below the windscreen as I was going to start the cars repaint with practicing on this panel.
Today, I decided to put this panel back on so I could look at getting the car to the panel beaters to sort out the holes in the roof from the screw on roof rack rails but before doing this I decided to dismantle and lube up the wiper linkages. There are the shafts for each wiper arm and a number of ball joints.
I pulled these apart, cleaned everything, lubed things up (used bearing grease cause that's what I had) and put it all together again. Everything was dry and I could feel a bit of resistance especially in the wiper arm shafts.
The end result is, the wipers now go at least twice as fast as they previously did.
I would suggest to everyone to look at doing this work if they are experiencing wiper speed issues.
Note - where the wiper arm shafts go into the plastic housings they are held in place with what appeared to be a circlip. The thing I found with the 82 model MY is the circlips are not made of spring steel as I expected. The clips seem to be made from simple mild steel so they bend very easily. I suggest being carful in removing them and putting them back on as I imagine these clips wouldn't be too hard to break.
In all, a very worthwhile job done.