Wipers Stopping in the Middle Diagnosing Wiper Circuitry on 4th Gen CK Pickups 1988-98

What is going on with these wiper blades? They just stop wherever they want. Unbelievable.

Hey friends, it's Len here from 1A Auto. So I have a fourth-generation Chevy Silverado K1500 in the studio today. We have a common problem that I wanted to talk to you about. The wiper arms on this don't seem like they wanna function properly. Honestly, it doesn't necessarily have to do with the wiper blades, or the wiper arms, it has to do with something that's located under the hood. Let's go ahead and pop this up, and here's where the issue lies. So let's go over a quick symptoms list on this. We try to turn on the wiper blades, maybe you try it on delay, low, or even high. The wiper blades might end up starting, but they don't necessarily do the full suite. They don't go all the way to one side, and then all the way back over to the other side. They just kind of stop maybe a quarter of the way, or maybe they make it almost all the way back, but they just don't go back to the return or beginning position. Other than that, maybe they don't even function at all. You go ahead and you give it a little twist, the wiper blades aren't actually gonna work. When does this happen? Generally, at the worst time possible. You're gonna be driving in the rain, you need your wiper blades, and they're not functioning. Lastly, you might try to use the windshield wiper squirter. You can go ahead and push on that little knob right there, and for some reason, you don't even hear the wiper motor under the hood functioning. There's no washer fluid coming out from the cowl spraying up onto the windshield, so if you've got a dirty windshield and you're trying to clean it off, it's not gonna be able to clean it off for you. Any of these symptoms could potentially be very dangerous. Seeing through your windshield is something that you need for safety, obviously, when you're driving down the road. So I wanted to go over a couple of things that we can pay attention to right under the hood.

Now if you find that you're having the majority of these symptoms, the first place that I would wanna check is this connector right here. We will just go ahead and pop this off, and we're gonna inspect it and make sure that we don't have any corrosion on it. After that, if assuming that looks good, we'll continue on to removing the cover. With the cover off, you wanna inspect it. Make sure it's not cracked and broken in any way. If it looks like there's a crack or that there's a chip or anything missing from it, there's a possibility that moisture or debris could be making its way in. As you can tell, along this edge right here, there's dirt that's actually making its way into where this cover area is, which tells me that this area needs to be cleaned for sure. Let's have a look at this right here. Now at this point, you can look at this, and you can see areas where it looks like there should be a little bit of a seal of some sort, and it's just kind of deteriorated. At that point, moisture can make its way into this circuit board. Also what we wanna pay attention to on the circuit board before we remove this from the motor, is to just see if we have any corrosion, or it looks like it has dark spots where maybe it overheated. This one looks like it's okay. I'm gonna carefully remove this, just give it a little wiggle, we don't want to break any of the prongs. And we're gonna remove this from the motor assembly, let's have a look at it.

All right, so we removed the circuit board from the wiper motor. This is actually considered a pulse board. Essentially what it's supposed to do is get power sent to it, and then it's gonna send it out to where it needs to be. So if you have it on delay function, this is gonna tell the wiper motor exactly what to do. Now, if it's not making good contact in some points because maybe there's a soldering issue, or maybe there's a circuit board issue, you're not gonna have that delayed function or even sometimes the low or high function. And even in some possibilities, you might even lose, like I said before, the washer pump function. Now what can happen on these is, of course, if the wiring harness that went into it was moving around, maybe it was stuck on there and somebody was trying to disconnect it, and they were just wiggling it around like a monkey or something like that, of course, that might get the wiring harness off of there but you can imagine how fragile this circuit board is right along here. If you wiggle it around too much, there's a possibility that you could break the solder points that are located right along here. If you wiggle this around, and it feels like it has a lot of wiggle to it, double-check those solder points. You wanna make sure that there isn't any broken solder points. If there is, generally you can try to clean it up and re-solder it, and overall it should technically work for you.

Other areas that could potentially go bad, is this area right along here. You can see on mine, I have three little prongs. These three prongs go right into the wiper motor itself. Now if either of those areas on the backside of there, like I said before, came loose due to the soldering breaking down, of course, it's not gonna be able to make good contact to the motor itself, and the motor isn't gonna know what to do. So you wanna just go ahead and give those a little wiggle as well. Don't try to pry on them with a pry bar, or grab them with some pliers and try to pull them out like a loose tooth or anything like that, but just give them a gentle wiggle. If they move at all, check those solder points. If it doesn't move, more than likely it's still good. Other than that, just kind of give the overall circuit board a nice look over. If it looks like it's burnt in any way, or it's damaged, or maybe it has some corrosion on it, more than likely you're probably just gonna have to replace the whole circuit board. Generally, like I said, it does come down to a soldering issue. So if you find a loose spot, just go ahead and re-solder it, and give it a try. This electrical circuit board is supposed to be protected from moisture or even debris making its way into the engine compartment. It wants to make sure that everything's nice and protected. This right here is a 1994. It's a pretty old truck. It's over 20 years old at this point. The seal that's supposed to be on there is broken down or even gone. Without a seal, there's always the probability that moisture or debris is gonna make its way in there. If it does, you can look at this area right along here, you have these two prongs, those are supposed to be contact points. They're gonna match right up onto this area right along here, and if there's debris in there, it's not gonna make contact the way that it should and the wiper motor isn't gonna know exactly where it's supposed to be when it's supposed to be.

Now on this one, you can tell the debris has been making its way in, it's settled down along the bottom here, and of course, it's even accumulated along the dielectric grease that's supposed to be in there. It's supposed to have a little bit of grease in there, that's gonna help make sure that it doesn't wear down the contact points, but it's also gonna help ensure that moisture doesn't get on to it and ruin the board overall. So after you check your circuit board, and you're sure that nothing's wrong with it, like it's not burnt in any way, or have a lot of corrosion on it, the next thing I'm gonna wanna do is just try to clean up the contact points. You can see I have two tabs, there's one right here. This one's got quite a bit of gunk on it, actually, that's probably not making good contact, and then I have this one right here. I'm just gonna go ahead and clean off anything that's on these, make sure they're nice and clean. I'll just give these a light sand, that way there we have a nice contact point on both of these. And of course, we wanna make sure that the contact points are sitting in the same positions. This one right here, you can tell it's bent back a little bit, it might not be making contact on the motor assembly itself. So we'll clean up these two areas, we'll bend these, so they're both matching. And then, of course, we're gonna go ahead and clean down the circuit board area itself. When we clean it, I'm gonna use some circuit board cleaner, you definitely don't wanna use a regular parts cleaner. We don't wanna damage this in any way.

Now once we've cleaned down the circuit board, we're gonna continue on to the motor itself. You wanna pay attention to those little ears inside there. That's where the circuitry is going to connect onto, so you wanna make sure you don't see any green crunchies in there. If you do, that's corrosion, it needs to be dealt with. To deal with that, you can carefully use a file of some sort or even a small pocket screwdriver. This one looks good, so I don't have to worry too much about it. But what I do wanna worry about is all of this debris that's located inside of here. I wanna try to get it all off there. Also, I'm gonna use a nice, flat blade razor blade like this, and just remove any of the existing gasket that's still on this. We're gonna go ahead and replace it with some gasket maker. All right. Now I have the outer portion of the seal down along here, but I wanna make sure that I get along this area right here. And then I also wanna make sure that there's no debris inside either of these channels or all the way at the end. We're gonna have to have a gasket maker going around this entire area.

Once you have the entire seal coming around this area nice and clean, the next thing we wanna do is clean up this area right back here. This one, as you can tell, it's got a whole bunch of grease on it. It's okay to have some grease on it, but you wanna make sure that the grease that is on it is dielectric grease, and you wanna make sure it's clean. So let's go ahead and wipe this down because that's the contact area where the circuit board is gonna connect on to as well. Looking at this, you can see exactly where the contact points were rubbing on this. As the motor's spinning, it's gonna go ahead and turn this like that, and that's gonna make it so the contact points are gonna drag up against this. That's the point of why we need to have some lubricant in there. Also, down along the lower area here, this is where the motor is gonna come through and has a little cog, and that's what's gonna be able to spin this. That's supposed to have lubricant on it as well. You wanna make sure that it's nice and clean, and then, of course, we'll re-lubricate that as well.

Now that we have the circuit board and the motor clean, the next thing that I wanna clean is the cover itself. You can see exactly where it's gonna sit up against the motor, we wanna make sure we get out any of this debris that's inside there, that way there we can replace it with some RTV. Now that we have everything clean, we're gonna continue on to adding some dielectric grease. We're gonna come right inside this slot right here, and just try to get some on those terminal ends. That's gonna help make sure moisture doesn't make its way onto these contact points. Let's go ahead and coat the surface of this, just a nice thin coat. And then, of course, we'll get this shaft right under here, put plenty on there. That's gonna help make sure that everything's nice and quiet for you. Now, this part you don't necessarily need to do because we just coated the motor, but I'm just gonna do it anyways. I'm gonna coat these three prongs right here. And then let's do these two tabs.

Now I'm gonna use some gasket maker. This is essentially just black RTV, and all I'm gonna use it for is to restrict moisture from getting into this motor right here. So I'm gonna go along both of these channels. Let's go ahead and fill in that little groove right here. And I'm gonna just get along the backside. That's gonna look a little messy right now, but that's okay. As long as it keeps the moisture out, that's what I'm worried about, I can clean off the mess when I'm done. Now we can take our circuit board and we're gonna slide it in. This area right up along here is the area that's gonna slide into those two grooves. Let's line up the bottom and the top groove, we'll gently slide this in. If it feels like it's under any pressure, you wanna make sure you stop and resituate it. There we are. All right, now it's time to go ahead and seal up the cover. You wanna make sure you get along this entire groove that goes all the way around the cover. That's how we're gonna seal it and make sure that no moisture makes its way in. All right, now that we've got our sealant on here, let's go ahead and line it up with the motor. Slide it right on there. All right, start in all three of your crews and then snug them up. All right, it's nice and tight. Now it's time to connect in our wiring harness. Let's just use a little bit of that dielectric grease, come along each of the terminals ends here. It's gonna help keep the moisture out of there. Line it up, plug it in. Give it a wiggle, make sure it's secure.

Okay, so we got it all put back together. What's left to do now, we're gonna test it and make sure it functions properly. But I just wanna mention to you, commonly, if somebody is having this wiper blade issue with this particular generation vehicle, they're just gonna replace that entire wiper motor. I'm here to let you know you don't necessarily need to do that. Generally, it just comes down to the circuit board. Yeah, 1A Auto sells the circuit board, and of course, the entire wiper motor assembly as a whole. But overall, we care more about your safety and helping you do things right the first time, and figuring it out on your own. So I want to tear this apart, show you what's going on. Hopefully, it helps you. Let's go ahead and test it.

Oh, we got some washer squirters going on here. That means that pump's working great. Let's go ahead and put this on low. Not bad. High. Turn it off and make sure it stops where it needs to be set. Perfect. Okay friends, so we got the wiper motor functioning properly as you can see. Even the washer motor works the way that it needs to. That's great. It didn't cost me any money. All I had to do was clean things down a little bit and re-lubricate. Of course, if you went ahead and you tried all these things, and it still didn't wanna work, the next thing that I would do is replace that circuit board. That's generally the issue. You don't necessarily need to replace the entire motor unless of course there's an issue with the motor itself.

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I'm assuming it's gonna stop any minute. Okay, that's a random spot to stop. Come on.