Disclaimer: I'm a dumb college student on a budget with limited electrical experience and a little bit more experience wrenching on cars. I'm willing to get my hands dirty (obviously, I bought a 30 year old car lol).

I got a base model 1983 FB a couple months ago and one of the problems with it is the wipers won't work. I checked the fuse and it's fine, and then checked the wiper motor itself with a multimeter and got no reading at all.

1st, is the wiper motor potentially repairable? How would I even go about doing this if I go this route? My guess from a lack of any reading on the motor makes me think it's just a wire inside that's come undone, but again, I really have no idea what I'm talking about..

2nd, the closest junkyard that has an FB is close to 200 miles away from me, so I'm not too keen to drive that far for a $30-40 part. Could I just get any random wiper motor from a junkyard nearby and try and retrofit that to the wiper linkage? How difficult would this route be? With my limited experience, is this even feasible?

3rd, I can buy one off ebay or here, but this will likely be more expensive and I much prefer the satisfaction and experience of rigging this myself than buying the parts off the internet.

Any help is appreciated

 

Im 90% sure that the wiper assembly is seized up. Its extremely common and a huge pita.

I brought one back to life last winter by pulling it, and soaking it all in wd40 for a few days. The motor was weak too, probably by trying to move a seized drive assembly for years. Mine worked awesome until a few weeks ago, where it started to seize up again lol

 

Thanks for the response, I had a hell of a time getting the wiper assembly out today. Since I couldn't get it to the up position it needed to be in to take it all out, I ended up bending the linkage pretty good... with some elbow grease and cleaning spray, I unseized it though.

Unfortunately, the motor seems seized as well..

Took the wiper motor off and hooked it up to my car battery with some clips to see if it would move. The wires were sparking but the motor wasn't moving. Is this good in an electrical sense? Or does this shorting mean that something is messed up?

I opened the whole motor assembly up and nothing looked broken, or too dirty.
I separated the motor from its housing and the motor spun fine inside. I put the motor back together.
As far as the gear housing goes, I was unable to turn the worm gear. I'm guessing it's because the output shaft (the part that attaches to the cam that moves the whole wiper linkage) is seized.

Do you guys think this motor will run if I just unseize that part??? I'm not really sure about anything electricity, but I'm hoping this is all it needs...

 

If the motor is shorted they normally instantly pop the related fuse. Did you check that?

 

I checked the motor when it was unhooked from the car. Just ran wires from the battery straight to the motor ^^^

Also, after looking at the fuse again, it is definitely blown. When I first looked at it, I was expecting burn marks on the metal parts; didn't realize the wire inside is what I should be looking at...

If I plug the motor into the car correctly, would it not short or will it keep blowing fuses?

 

sounds like you messed up the motor because of the excess load from seized linkages. Rock Auto has the motors. And it sounds like you un froze the linkages with a ton of elbow grease. Mazdatrix might still have the linkage assemblies.

Been there , done that. And screwing around with a wiper linkage, applying logic, trial and error, beats the hell out of a new car payment!!

 

So I broke my wiper motor unseizing it today... but on the bright side I bent the linkage back to spec, cleaned it all up, and got it all back together. Now just to find a motor for this.

Can I just solder the wires on some random wiper motor to the switch in the cowl of the car? I realize this may potentially leave me without one of the speeds, but would the left out speed just be a dead spot in my switch in the car or would that cause a short when I went to the left out setting?

 

So to bring this thread back, I've been lazy and haven't gotten around to putting in the wiper motor I got until today.

I plugged the motor in to test it. It spun for a few rotations, so I turned it off, disconnected it and screwed it onto the linkage and put it all in the car. I put the wiper arms back on and tested it. The motor made a sound with a little movement and then stopped. Now when I turn the wiper switch onto any setting, nothing happens, although the motor is getting warm. I tried a new fuse with no change.

Please tell me the motor I just bought didn't crap out on me... the member I bought it from already jerked me around and made me wait a month until I filed a suit with paypal to ship it out to me...

Is there anything I should check to see why it's not working?