Slack wipers / wheelbox

The rain on my drive home reminded me; there's a lot of play in my ('93) Defender's wiper blades; the passenger side one flops over the windscreen seal at the extent of it's travel. When I had it in for service a few weeks back the mechanic blamed it on wear in the wiper wheelboxes.

Replacing them should be within my modest ability, but there appears to be a moderate amount of work in stripping back the dash to get at them in the first place. Before I order new wheelboxes, and disassemble the dash; is there anything else that's worth considering as the source of the play first?

Ta,

James

No but stripping back to the wiper motor is fairly easy - had a problem with mine and got it down to an under-5-minute fine art! Just make sure you make a note of where the wires go else yer'll be having slow on fast etc! Just take the handle off, remove the trim strip, take the speaker box off and yer nerly there!

But saying that, mine does the same thing as your description and always has so if it's only recently started you probably have plenty of "wear" left (although you'll probably only find out that you haven't during a deluge when you most need em!)

Good luck.
OD

odenne said:

But saying that, mine does the same thing as your description and always has so if it's only recently started you probably have plenty of "wear" left (although you'll probably only find out that you haven't during a deluge when you most need em!)

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It's been slowly getting worse over the last year. It's the noise of it hitting the window edge that annoys me more than anything else. I'm happy getting back to the motor; it's removing the steering wheel, instruments, center console, radio etc. and then working out what order the rest of the trim comes off that'll wear me down

where on earth is yer wiper motor???

odenne said:

where on earth is yer wiper motor???

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I meant stripping the dash down to get at the wiper wheelboxes, not the motor.

pishmishy said:

It's been slowly getting worse over the last year. It's the noise of it hitting the window edge that annoys me more than anything else. I'm happy getting back to the motor; it's removing the steering wheel, instruments, center console, radio etc. and then working out what order the rest of the trim comes off that'll wear me down

Click to expand...

get yer arse down the scrap yard and cut a small strip of door seal of a car. Fit it over the lip of the channel just below your wipers. Job done. No more annoying knocking.

Mine did that on the drivers side. Make sure the little bolt holding the wiper arm on hasn't come loose. It tightens onto a flat section and mine had worn a bit. WD40 and tightened it up and bit and slop gone!