They seemed to be going very slow today. Cleaned thescreen with copius amounts of washing liquid to remove as much drag as possible to no avail. Doesn’t make any difference whatever speed setting its on either. I reckon its operating at 50%. Any ideas please?

What car?

Not an old VW Passat or an Audi A4 is it?

Octavia 03 so that’s sounding ominous and expensive then!

have they held a ballot recently?

No, but I was made redundant from a council recently so perhaps they are coming out in sympathy.

Well the good news is (I think) it’s VW group, so I can tell you how I fixed my lazy ass wipers on my Passat and on my A4…

It’s a VERY common problem…

Basically, you need to get under the windscreen/bulkhead to where the wiper motor and mechanism is. What’s happened is the whole thing has started to seize up, there’s too much friction in there. If you catch it quick enough, you can save the motor from burning out. Managed to free mine off by spraying copious amounts of GT85 into the bushings whilst operating the wipers, which started to free it off, then a good quality spray grease in there afterwards to make sure it stayed nicely lubed.

Cheaper/easier/less hassle than letting it get any worse and having to replace the whole assembly and the wiper motor for sure!

Thanks mboy. That’s what I’ll be doing in the morning then. Tell me about spray greese though. Not got any so whats the brand name etc?

Lift wipers off screen and see if they speed up, if they do, its friction between the screen and the wiper, get some car polish and wipe on screen and wiperes, polish off, and youll be amazed at the anmount of muck, washing up liquid doesnt remove.

if you don’t catch them early enough, they are removable but watch your fingers.
You can then strip the mechanism take a grinder to the axles clean the rust off, add some grease the re-assemble.

what i will say is don’t hit the ends of the threads with a hammer as your dis-assembling, the threads don’t like it….

and if you need to take the wiper arms off there is a knack,

have a look on Briskoda i think there is a photo thread showing how to do it, it might have been on a VW forum though??

Now going to trawl through briskoda. Thanks for the info and heads up guys.

Spray grease wise, dunno, have a wander into Halfords or your local car parts place, and ask for some spray grease.

BE VERY CAREFUL when handling the wipers too, not to let the arms smack down onto the windscreen, or to be too tough with the plastic trim attached to the bottom of the screen. Fortunately, was scrapping the car anyway that I was removing the mechanism off in this case, but by not being particularly careful managed to crack the windscreen in 2 separate places!

Note to self, use mboys advice with caution 😆