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94 GCaravan Rr Wiper Arm Stirpped

I have a 94 Dodge Grand Caravan with 217K miles on it.

It was doing pretty well until today, when in the rain, the rear wiper did the "Point to the Ground" thing.

After playing around (and blowing the wiper motor fuse, especially when it insists on trying to clean the trunk lid and not the window) it appears -- after pulling on and removing the wiper arm -- that one of the parts is stripped:

There is a knurled rod coming out of the wiper motor/gasket/window, which appears to be a press fit on to a cap which fits into a larger knurled socket in the wiper arm itself. It's the interior of this socket, the one that goes over the knurled motor arm, which appears to be stripped (at least the interior is smooth -- I don't know if it was always smooth, knurled, or glued). This larger cap socket has some sort of flat retaining mechanism to keep it from coming off the motor shaft (or course this doesn't work if the shaft socket itself is stripped).

My questions are, for any one who has a manual or has done this repair:

1) The motor seems to be OK. Left on it's own, w/o the wiper arm attached, it definitely does the correct back-n-forth motions.

2) Will buying an new wiper arm solve my problem?

3) From what I can see, there in no way to remove the wiper arm socket (that has the retainer clip) itself. So I'll assume that a new wiper arm contains this socket and it's my job to press-fit a new arm/socket assembly over the motor shaft.

3) Based upon what has happened so far, the wiper arm to wiper motor shaft must be a pretty tight fit. How do you safely press-fit it back on the motor shaft w/o fear of doing harm to the lift gate glass?

Thanks in advance.

Reply to
Private Person
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You buy a new wiper motor. The spline is part of the motor shaft.

Or if you are cheap! You JB weld the wiper arm to the old motor shaft = (in the correct position of course) but once you have done that you will never be= able to replace that wiper arm, just the blade.

Reply to
Kurt

Based on your post, and the "nothing to lose principle", I've ended up drilling a hole thru the wiper arm and into the motor shaft to secure it with a stainless steel screw and a small amount of epoxy. It appears to be holding, though I have a new van on order and only need it to last another month or so.

Thanks for your reply.

Reply to
Private Person

I was going to ask you how much longer were you going to keep it on the = road, but.....

I have never seen the splines stripped from a wiper motor before, they = must really be making them with "low cost material" back in 94.

Back in my days of working at GM dealers I would see the copper rivets = wear out on the windshield wiper transmissions, the part was around eight = dollars a side, the labor was about a hour at a whopping $35.00 a hour.

I glad you found a temporary fix.

1997 SFA 60920 1998,1999,2000,2001,2002,2003 AMA 602785 Due to E-Mail spamming bots my reply address is incorrect. Add a "-" between mr and wizard This is what we have to do to prevent "Spamming?" Sucks doesn't it?
Reply to
Kurt

Unfortunately, this is not the first Dodge caravan I have seen on the road with the dreaded "pointed-at-the-ground" rear wiper.

However, a couple of years ago there was a recall for this year/model having to do with rear wiper motor problems that would blow the fuse (which also happens to control the air-bags as well). I had it fixed then under a recall warranty and now wonder if the repair proceedure contributed to the current problem. I do know that I blew the 20-amp fuse twice while trying to fix the problem, so it doesn't take a lot of rear wiper resistance to heat things up.

In any case, my kludge fix is working, so I'm happy.

Reply to
Private Person

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