Seized wiper wheel boxes

Hi all,
Well, after my wipers packed up I determined by various means that the problem was the wiper motor. And indeed there is a serious fault with that motor, so buying a new one was not a waste of money. But it's clearly not the whole story, since the wipers are still frozen in position and immovable even when the linkage mechanism to the motor is disconnected. So there is some fault I need to locate that will be either in the sheathed drive cable that comes out of the motor, or else in the wiper wheel boxes or possibly the actual wiper shafts themselves may have seized solid in their bearings for some reason.
I understand this is not an uncommon problem from the old threads I've read, but which of these components is the usual culprit when this happens; it's typical failure mode and is it readily fixable and/or will it require an entire new 'drive train' between motor and wiper shafts?
Ta,
LL

When mine failed the spinal that goes through the body on the passenger side had sesed solid. The garage disconnected eveverything and had a set of mole grips on it and it still won't move.

You should be able to move the wiper arm spindles a small amount even if the cable is seized, if one or other (or both) of them is totally solid (no backlash at all) then that wheelbox is seized. If both move a few degrees then it is probably the cable.

Wiper boxes aren't that much money (go for genuine), but it is a pain to change them. I did mine a few weeks ago (that turned out not to be seized)

Kwakerman said:

You should be able to move the wiper arm spindles a small amount even if the cable is seized, if one or other (or both) of them is totally solid (no backlash at all) then that wheelbox is seized. If both move a few degrees then it is probably the cable.

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A pretty accurate assessment! Turned out to be the passenger side wiper drive shaft had seized solid in the sleeve that locates it in the bulkhead. No amount of penetrating oil would free it off and using HD stilsons risked damaging the bulkhead so in the end I had to cut it out. I didn't fancy having to go through all the palaver of removing the dash again if the driver's side failed so have replaced the wiper system in its entirety.

Landlover99 said:

A pretty accurate assessment! Turned out to be the passenger side wiper drive shaft had seized solid in the sleeve that locates it in the bulkhead. No amount of penetrating oil would free it off and using HD stilsons risked damaging the bulkhead so in the end I had to cut it out. I didn't fancy having to go through all the palaver of removing the dash again if the driver's side failed so have replaced the wiper system in its entirety.

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I did much the same thing on mine and replaced everything in one hit, not too hard to do while its all apart but a pain if you had to strip it all over again to do the other side.