window wiper hell

hi there, i have a defender td5, but the window wiper on the drivers side, appears to be over running one side... then going off on the other side... on the same cylce, but then it will return to its normal position for a couple of wipes and do it all over again...... and its slowly starting to annoy me as ive had to put a new wiper blade on yesterday.... and noticing its wearing away the window seal.....

any ideas?

cheers dave.

If only one is doing it, it sounds like the wiper box is faulty, might have a worn tooth which is allowing it to slip then pickup drive again pushing it too far.

Remove the top panel from the dash (3 or 4 screws not a big job) and you can see the wiper boxes, they are a total pain in the neck to change in situ but I have done it before.

Also worth taking the wiper arm off to see if the internal grooves/splines have worn. If they have, then this ca cause similar symptoms. Worth checking/changing the wiper spindle that that the arm slots onto as well, its held on with one allen key grub screw.

What Disco and Lead Farmer say

My favourite is the wiper motor gearbox TBH

Happens on mine, but dosent bother me.

Hope that helps.

If you don't want to change your wiper box you can cheat instead....

Remove the wiper arms from the wiper boxes, Undo the end of the dash, unbolt the wiper motor, remove the wiper motor and long flexi drive shaft spring thing. Now rotate the offending wheel box/boxes by either 180degs if you are happy to change the wiper box the next time it happens, or by 120 degs if you want an extra go out of it before it needs changing (if you feel that your wiper is REALLY slack then you are better off rotating by 180degs). then re-fit everything in reverse order of dissassembly. As stated above by others, I would change the wiper spindle while I am at it. The grub screw can often rust in or round off when trying to remove them. It may be necessary to either carefully drill out the grub screw or use a Nut splitter to split the spindle.