Windshield wipers quit working on the 1998 Suburban Any ideas?

[Danish Farmer]

Hi, Yes I am sure the motor needs the grease. Mine looked the same, and the motor it self always ran good.
Like mentioned above, my fault came from some sort of loose connection in the connection-plug
I ended up getting a used unit with a better connection, and the vipers started working again. Though, the intervals in the other one I got did nok work, som now I am getting a new cirkuit-board

//Max

 

[someotherguy]

Guys...just resolder the five large joints where the harness socket attaches to the circuit board. Trust me on this one...I know I'm the "new guy" here but this IS the fix for the circuit board, and you're far better off with the original, than some chinese-made replacement!

The very first joint at the edge of the board is the ground. It's also coincidentally the first one to fail. You won't necessarily see the cracks in the solder joints; they can be small enough to cause you trouble but still not be visibly cracked to the naked eye without magnification. Cracked joints here will cause all manner of oddball problems with the wipers - failure to work altogether, failure to park properly when turned off, running on, funny buzzing noises instead of working, squirter won't work although pump motor is good, etc.

It also doesn't hurt if while you have the board popped out, spray some contact cleaner on the three tabs that push into the motor itself, and some more inside the harness socket, then reassemble.

Again, you can trust me on this one, I have fixed dozens upon dozens of these for customers in the past at my old shop and also advised uncountable people on teh intarwebs on doing the same for themselves. I'm definitely not the originator of this information but a solid believer in it from lots of experience. If you already own a soldering iron and some electronics solder you can fix this faster than driving to the parts house for a ching chong replacement board.

Here's a pic lifted from another site; notice the five joints at the top left of the board have circles around them, these are the ones you need to resolder. There's another one circled further down but you can ignore that one; likely it just happened to also be messed up for whoever took that picture - it's not a commonly bad one. The ones on the harness connector fail because of the physical strain of the harness dragging it down/vibrating; solder is an excellent electrical connection but a poor physical one and over time it cracks.

Richard

 

[jrsavoie]

thanks. Much appreciated

 

[Brooklyn Tow]

Friend of mine said, "Don't buy another one"...(Or was it a recall).....anyway 10 min later he soldered it and it's been going ever since.

If I would of replaced it, the new unit probably would of broke a long time ago.

 

[Turbine Doc]

The other possibility is the relay on the board itself as was my case years ago, so a re-solder of the problem prone cold joints did not fix it, I bought a replacement from GM back in 2003, mine has been running fine since, supposedly the recall that covered this issue was canceled because the replacement board "fixed" the problem, I about 6 mos of warranty when mine went.