Cheap and easy wiper motor fix
When Land Rover enthusiasts are not grumbling about our favourite vehicles becoming unaffordable, another favourite topic of conversation is the way in which major components on modern vehicles are no longer repaired when they fail, but thrown away and replaced with new ones. Modern in this context means pretty much anything made after 1990, and the grumblers have a point. The Lucas wiper motor on a Series III, for example, is a lovely piece of kit, with good quality bearings and made to last forever. When the motor dies, nine times out of ten a new set of brushes will restore it to full health at minimal cost.
Yet even on the older, theoretically repairable stuff, many garages will prefer to replace rather than repair, and for good reason. If you replace a broken component with a brand-new one from a reputable source, 99 per cent of the time the new component will work. If you try to repair the old component and fail (and there can be many reasons why a repair might be unsuccessful) you still end up having to fit a new component, and you have maybe a couple of hours’ labour that you cannot readily charge to the customer for failing to fix the old one. One of the joys of being self-employed is that I do not have to answer to a workshop manager, and sometimes I will try to repair a component just for the challenge, and especially if it is something I have not had the chance to dismantle before.
I had a Defender 90 come in with a few minor electrical issues, among which was a non-working rear wiper. Resisting the temptation to say “They all do that, Sir” (I mean, how many of these vehicles have a rear wiper that actually works?) I set about investigating. The fuse had blown, so I replaced it, switched on the wiper and after two seconds there was the distinctive pop of a 10 Amp fuse going to meet its maker. The cause was not too hard to find: the wiper spindle was seized solid. So I removed the wiper motor and pondered my options. I didn’t have a secondhand motor on the shelf and a new one was around £250. There was a pressed steel cover over the wiper mechanism which was riveted on, so I drilled out the rivets to reveal a perfectly conventional, fully-dismantlable gear and crank arrangement for transmitting drive from the motor to the spindle. With this removed I attacked the spindle with hammers and penetrating fluid and soon had it out. Cleaned, greased, reassembled (with self-tapping screws to replace the rivets) and back on the vehicle in under an hour, and it worked perfectly. Happy customer, happy me.
As I write this I have a pile of dead 200Tdi injection pumps on the bench, and I have spent the best part of a day trying to build up one pump which actually works for an engine on my test bed, so far without much success. My workshop is full of acrid smoke and my clothes are soaked in diesel. Some you win, some you lose.