I was looking at it the other day.. and most of the electrical motors that I have seen dissected out of cars that were 20 years old showed there wear and tear on the inside. Most were surprisingly in good shape, though, and would have benefited from a thorough cleaning and re-lube at some point in their life.

 

I ask this because im pondering taking my wiper motor apart and cleaning the brushes/coils etc. Theres bound to be scads of grunge built up since it was built, and i doubt its ever been replaced. Im doing this in the hopes that it, along with a linkage lubejob, will give me increased wiper speed, something that even a 90 amp alternator did not achieve. Once electrical resistance in the power circuit had been eliminated as a cause (there was no difference at all in the wipers.. the lights and everything else stayed steadier, but the wipers havent ever been an "issue," just annoyingly slow) I figured i would eliminate mechanical resistance and give-er a rebuild.. I may end up finding a few bad brushes that I need to snag some donor parts out of a junkyard but hey.. I bet its worth it.

 

Anyhow, has anyone else ever tried this? An electric motor is usually a simple enough thing, i dont THINK im gonna get in over my head.. I just hope i dont break anything. If I do ive got a NOS unit from my uncle, but i want to try and sell that, not use it....

Yeah - I took the one on my Brat apart once for a cleaning. Didn't help my slow wipers, and it actually looked pretty good inside. And here in the NW, we get a LOT of rain, so I can't imagine it was not used a significant amount. Make sure to use an electrically friendly grease on the rotory contacts.

 

GD

thanks GD, i was astounded to see how much they charge for piddlingly small tubes of dielectric grease.. this is just a project ive got on my to do list that probably wont get taken care of for a while, but i DO have one tiny packet of the stuff left. Thats not insulating, is it? i smeared it all over the contacts of the relay i just installed for my starter circuit, just to keep them clean.. and all over my battery terminals, and just about anything else i could find because i had some left over. I managed to make one tiny packet go one ridiculous long way... but as soon as I get a job im gonna need to buy me a decent sized tube.

i'd get another used unit (post on the wanted forums) and go to town on that one if this car is your daily driver. rain-X is awesome, i highly recommend it. although it works best at 35 mph and over in my soobs.

well, its not that bad. just itching to make sure its optimal, thats all.. the way I see it theres a good chance that its funk-nasty in there, so i may as well clean it out.

 

I use rain-x too, doubleplusgood. I actually have gotten to the point where I use the rain-x washer fluid... two birds, one stone. I tend to forget to re apply the rain-x until its grossly overdue.. and then cant find the godforsaken bottle.... etc etc.

 

Im probably not gonna see any improvement, this is probably simply how they came. How much can I erally expect, yanno? I'm just tweaking, thats all.

I couldn't believe what fixed my wiper speed.... dropping front suspension and scrapping egr, and keeping top end of engine cooler. What a miracle. It's not only faster, the wipers stick to the windshield above 60mph.

being in florida i can understand, insane quantities of blinding rain are much more common down there. 80's wipers probably are lacking for that area.