The wipers on my GMC do not wipe sometimes. I turn them on and I can hear the wiper motor laboring but no wipe. Sometimes they are fine. This is a problem as it rains quite a bit in the Vancouver area.

I have read about the faulty solder points on the circuit board attached to the wiper motor. I will repair tomorrow. Any tips appreciated. Apparently 95-96-97 some 98's were safety recalled for this? I had a good link to a repair procedure but lost it when my computer crashed.

take it to the dealership they replace the board for free.. if you repair it.. you can kiss a free replacement ever good bye..

if theres a dealership near you i'd just take it in.. if not then i understand the fix it yourself route.. but its a total open replacement,... no limits time/mileage because it's a safety recall

-brian

Correct. There is a recall for the wiper controller. This is under the hood where the wiring harness hooks into the wiper motor assembly.

Usually its because the connectors do not make good contact. There is a recall, and I would recommend getting it checked out.

Otherwise, you may need to clean the contacts or replace the board.

The contacts are wore out on the board. Your local auto parts has new replacement boards that will fix the problem. Easy to replace.

I just got a recall notice for this last week. My wipers work fine though because my carfax says this problem has already been addressed on my truck, but I'm bringing it in Tue. I'm not turning down a free new wiper motor.

Raining here, and my wipers are doing the same. Called the Dealer and they warranty it up 112,000 Km's. My truck has 137,000 km's :mad:

That recall/tsb (I don't remember which it was) Was only for a few specific years. And no, they don't replace the entire wiper motor.
What they replace is the component known as the "pulse board". (Basically the circuit board that sends power to the motor)
If your truck isn't included in the campaign for replacement, as diesel pro said, you can get one from most any parts store now. (The Napa # is
49-700-PB)

My 98 GMC Sonoma did the same thing. The circuit board problem is usually a crappy ground. The board has a metal ground that looks like a spade connector. It is held against the wiper assy by one of the cover screws. The easy fix is an auxilary ground wire from the plug to the wiper assy. There was 5 wires on my plug set up like a 5 on a dice. The center one was ground on mine. Easy, fast and damn near free fix.:cool2:
Ted

I'm only telling what the service rep. told me over the phone about wiper motor replacement I guess I'll find out Tue. As for the mileage I don't think there's a limit on a safety recall. they didn't even ask what mine was and I have 200K miles.

There's a blue relay on the board that failed on mine. I ended up in carefully removing the relay and some other part from the board as suited my purpose and soldered my own wires into it --- it's easy enough to follow the layout of the board to find places to put the wires in.

I did that because I needed some kind of plug to plug into the contacts of the wiper motor, and nothing fitted better than the contacts on the board. Bottom contact is ground, +12V on middle contact is normal speed, +12V on both middle and top contact is fast speed.

If you do your own wiring, you loose the interval, and the wipers will stop at the point where you turn them off.

It saved me about EUR 250 for a new motor ...


PS: You will also have to rewire the washer pump to your own switch because it's also controlled by the board. Having that is really nice, as you can spray water onto the screen and soak it without engaging the wipers :)