How you do you repair the windshield wiper assembly in a 2003 Saturn Ion?

Answer 1

This winter I was smacking the wipers against the windshield to get ice off of them. Afterwards, when using the wipers, the driver's side wiper would go too far in it's cycle, return to the home position later than usual, slamming back down to the home position (sort of violently - it made me and my wife laugh, but then she said "you really need to get that fixed"); sometimes it would go so far and go completely off of the windshield and past the column completely off of the car, making a lot of noise and did a very poor job of cleaning the windshield. It was seriously unsafe. Apparently I broke a piece of plastic that is part of the assembly. I could tell by shining a flashlight through the screened slots on the assembly cover. There were two jagged pieces of plastic that I could tell were once whole (the broken piece).

This was a fun little adventure for me. I spent a while trying to get the arms off of the spindle and that's when I found this posting. Thanks to the previous poster, I found you need to wiggle the round caps off that are at the bottom of the arms. There's a little slot on each arm by the cap just big enough for a small standard screw driver. Get it started with a small screw driver and then pull up from side to side until you work it off. These cover the nuts that hold the arms onto the spindle. Once the nuts are off, the arms still don't want to come off. I sprayed the spindle and nut with a little wd-40, then held the arm with one hand while pulling the arm up and smacked the spindle with a hammer. You need to remove the radio antenna; an adjustable wrench works well for that. You also need to disconnect the washer fluid hose under the hood. There's a quick disconnect near the wiper assembly cover. Pull it from each end while pulling one of the tabs away from the hose and then pull the other tab away. There's also about four or five plastic tabs connected to the wiper assembly cover that hold some wires; they need to come off. I used small pliers and pinched the plastic tabs on top while pulling the bottom piece downward. Once all that's done, there're two bolts and two plastic snaps that hold the wiper assembly cover onto the car. My plastic snaps on each end aren't the same since i pried them out, but they're not important. The cover's a pain to get off. I had to walk around the car, raising and lowering the hood while moving and wiggling the cover around. Seemed to be most annoying by the radio antenna hole. When you finally get the cover off, you have access to the assembly. The assembly's all one unit; and I bet if I would've taken my car to Saturn, they would've charged me for a whole new assembly plus at least an hours labor. (The part that was broken on mine is a piece of plastic that seems to have been manufactured with the metal tube crimped around it. It looks like it wasn't made to be repaired.) There are three bolts holding it on. There's a quick disconnect for the electrical connections on the motor that's easier to remove once you remove the three bolts and pull the assembly part way out. I think i had to flip the assembly over to find the little square opening. You need to stick a small standard screw driver in the opening while tugging on the quick disconnect. I don't have a garage (just a carport), so I was happy to learn the whole assembly comes off and you can take it inside where it's warm. That's how I got the windshield wiper assembly out of my 2003 Saturn Ion. I image you can buy a new assembly and slap it in. I'm assuming you have to purchase a whole new one if the motor goes out. It really looks like they made it as one part, forcing you to buy the whole thing if any part of it stops working or breaks. If you just had that plastic piece break like me, from beating the crap out of the wipers, then you should read below.

Towards the end of the metal tube, near where the piece of plastic broke, there's a little divot or indentation in the shape of a circle. (Having a table vice here helps a lot.) I drilled a whole the size of the circle on both sides; one side at a time (to ensure I drilled straight). I used different size bits, stepping up, finally drilling a 3/8 inch hole through the bar. Then i bought an aluminum strip from the hardware store. 1/8 inch thick and 3/4 inch wide. It was about $7. Also bought two 2 1/2-inch long (i think, maybe longer) 3/8 inch stainless steel bolts & nuts with four stainless washers and two stainless locking washers. 2.5 inch by 1/4" also work well. You may have to buy some extra non locking washers so that only the threads are exposed for the nut (if you buy that sort of bolt). I can't remember what length I cut the strips into, but it was long enough to go from the hole I drilled to the plastic piece to the hole in the tube. I think they were 3 or 4 or 5 inch strips; just measure from a quarter inch past the hole in the tube to the edge of the biggest open space in the plastic piece. I apologize if this is confusing. I fixed this last night for the first time and am going by memory of how I improvised my repair. It worked out perfectly! So you need an aluminum strip on each side of the bar. What I did was cut two strips that looked about the right size and drilled a 3/8 inch hole at the end of the strips, then bolted one of the strips onto the metal tube. 3" mending plates from Home Depot work great for this purpose. They are the right size, and there are already holes in the metal. All you have to do is drill out two of the holes on each of the two plates. I used the first and third holes. The hole closest to the edge of the plate went against the exposed plastic piece, and the third whole in the plate went against the aluminum tube from the wiper assembly. I put the plastic piece up to where it should be if it wasn't broken off and swung the aluminum strip over to the center of the biggest open space in the plastic piece and marked a dot onto the aluminum piece where the center of the open space on the plastic piece is. I drilled a 3/8 inch hole there into the aluminum strip. Then I marked a dot through the center of the new hole (of the strip) onto the plastic piece. I now cut a hole there into the plastic piece. Here I bolted the other aluminum strip on the other side and marked a dot through the other two holes and drilled a third hole, making a hole lining up through the two strips and the plastic piece. I then put the second bolt through those holes using a washer on each side of each bolt and a lock washer on the nut side. Tightened pretty tight, but not enough to break the plastic piece (obviously). If it's done well enough, it will be rock solid, like mine turned out, luckily. I hope my crappy instructions help. i uploaded some pictures to Flickr. check out the links below. Make sure that you configure the assembly correctly so that the motion is on the same side of the assembly. I first put the assembly together so that the cross bar was diagonal to the rest of the assembly. This caused each of the wipers to go in opposite directions. Oops! Before putting the wipers back on the assembly, I'd just turn them on to see if the wipers will move in sync and in the same direction.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/29614326@N07/3122794697/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/29614326@N07/3123620178/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/29614326@N07/3122795031/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/29614326@N07/3122794229/

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This a is very awesome article, we followed it exactly and it worked to the tee, saved us alot of money finding this. thank you very much.

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I had to repair both sides. I used the 3" mending plates from Home Depot, they worked great. I used 2" X 1/4 bolts with extra washers and nyloc (plastic locking insert) nuts. I did not use 3/8 bolts because I wanted to keep the holes drilled as small as possible.

I could remove the connector from the wiper motor, the wires on my car were very tight, not long enough to turn the assembly over as described above. I tried inserting a screw driver and an awl into the slot to free the connector but it would NOT budge. It started to crack.

I decided to cut the four wires and reconnect them later. This was a pain because the wires from the main harness to the wiper motor did not have enough slack to work with them comfortably. I ended up extending them but I had to tie wrap the extra slack because I didn't want the wires to contact the moving mechanism for the wipers.

Hopefully you can get your connector off................................. other than that the instructions worked perfectly

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The initial procedure worked well, thank you for the post.

Just a couple minor improvements:

1. Hitting the wiper stud/spline with a hammer could damage the threads. If you must use a hammer, back the nut half way off and hit the nut. Although, this did create some minor metal-smear on the nut, which had to be filed. However, I would rather file the hex nut (or use a new nut), than get out the tap-and-die kit to "chase the threads" on the wiper stud! That worked for the passenger side, but the hood was in way on the driver's side (even when open). For that I improvised and used a battery-terminal-puller. Saturn makes a special tool for the job, but any variety of bearing/pulley pullers may be used, if it's the right size. NOTE: when reassembling, I placed a small amount of anit-seize compound on the tapered spline. Be careful to only put it on the spline, and NOT the threads. For the threads, when reinstalling the wiper arm, use a SMALL amount of BLUE Locktight (not red!).

2. Like the person above, I had trouble with the electrical connector. I was determined NOT to cut the wires, so I opted to CAREFULLY loosen the 7 or 8 tabs on the plastic motor housing. The "stuck" connector remained attached to the housing cover, allowing me to then remove the wiper assembly. Before beginning repairs, I covered the exposed hole in the motor housing with masking tape, so no debris would get inside. Truth be told, removing the cover was a RISKY move. Any number of things could have gone wrong, which they did. After I repaired the wiper transmission tube, I reinstalled the assembly, and carefully put the motor housing cover back in place (making sure the brushes slid over the armature). But, when I op-checked the wipers, they were dead. The next day I started troubleshooting, and found that the 25 Amp fuse under the hood was toasted ("Wiper mini relay," but it's a fuse). I replaced the fuse, but it cooked the new fuse immediately when turning the wiper control to ON. I must have taken the wiper assembly out 4 or 5 more times, first checking for proper linkage motion, then checking under the housing cover again. Well, it turns out one of the brush wires on the cover had popped out of its stowage slot, and was touching the armature, hence the short circuit. I carefully placed the wire back, and it worked fine. IF YOU DO TRY REMOVING THE PLASTIC MOTOR HOUSING COVER, LIKE I DID, PLEASE BE CAREFUL!!!

3. Ok, during the housing cover debacle above (which cost me several hours and a few gray hairs), I was still determined to figure out how to remove the four-wire electrical connector. I did not mention it above, but when I was first trying to remove the connector, I had actually cracked and broken a small tab on the connector. Not sure what to do, I turned my attention to the 1/8" square opening on the back. One can see that there is a small tab/barb (inside the little square) which is holding the connector in place. I messed around with this for seemingly an hour, using a small screwdriver, but still could not get the connector to budge. I decided to snip off the rest of the protruding area (above the little square) with a pair of side-cutters or dykes. I removed the protruding portion that travels the length of the connector, and is about 3/8" wide. I was right in my assumption, but wrong in how to disable it. The small barb/tab inside the square is holding it in place, but once the extra plastic material was removed, it revealed a hidden tab that must be lifted up and over the small barb/tab. My guess is that the tab I had broken of at the beginning is a lever arm of sorts, used to lift the internal (hidden) tab. So, any first timers -- CAREFULLY USE THE LITTLE EXTERNAL TAB TO MOVE THE "HIDDEN" TAB OVER THE LITTLE BARB/TAB IN THE 1/8" SQUARE, BUT DO NOT USE TOO MUCH FORCE, OR IT WILL SNAP RIGHT OFF! I SUSPECT IT CAN BE DONE BY HAND, WITHOUT A SCREWDRIVER. Sorry if this seems like rambling, but just trying to describe in detail as best I can.

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Well my daughter tried wiping the snow off of her windshield and guess what broke. Yep you guessed it. Glad I found this thread! Went to Home Depot bought the 1/8"X3/4" Steel flat bar less than $4 bucks, (2) 2.5" X 1/4 bolts, washers and 1/4" ocking hex nuts. I pressed the broken piece together to get the measurement of indent on tube to broken plastic part. It was 1-5/8" center of drilled hole to center. I drilled both holes 1-5/8" center-center, then cut the bar to approx 2.5" then I drilled and cut a second piece. Next I drilled the indent portion of the aluminum tube with 1/4" drill. I attached both bars to the tube with the bolts to create a splint then I pressed the broken plastic piece back into place and drilled thru the open hole of the opposite end of the splint. Inserted the second bolt and made secure. I put the unit back into the car. Turned on the wiper it moved once then quit. The #19, 25A wiper fuse popped. I took everything apart again loosed the bolts and tried moving the assembly by hand. Once it seemed to move smoothly some pressure time to time in the rotation but not bad I placed it back into the car replaced the fuse and tested again. It WORKS! What a sight for sore eyes. Next I put everything back inplace in reverse order and its all good!

Nice thread and than you all!.

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Just finished my change out. The plastic broke at the point of exit from the aluminum tube. The mending strap from Home Depot great idea, went with 2", 1/4" stainless steel with locking nuts and a couple of flat washers. 2" was too long, sawed off maybe 1//4 inch.

Like most ran into the problem of breaking small plastic brace in connector. I saw the logic of having in a vice and drill press, but instead saw myself causing more problems than I needed. Took a hand drill, left the entire wiper brace in the car, but disconnected to I could get in a better position to work with. screwed into the indented area on the aluminum tube, through the plastic that remained on the inside. I actually took a smaller bit and drilled through the offsetting triangular black plastic. Bolted up both sides worked great. Thanks to all.

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I also found that the plastic broke as it exited the aluminum tube on the driver's side wiper, causing the wiper to swing off of the windshield. I'm not much of a fabricator so I ended up going to the dealer for a new part. I found it interesting that they no longer use plastic to mount the wiper arm spindle to the housing.

I found it easier to just remove the hood to allow better access to the wipers. It is only 4 bolts. I propped the hood up on pieces of 2x4 high enough to expose the bolts. Loosen all 4, then remove the rear ones first.

To pull the wiper arms off I needed a small gear puller. Pop the caps off and loosen the nuts. I left the nut partially on to keep the gear puller from slipping off the spindle. Breaking the wiper arm loose required a good deal of force and it came off with a "pop".

The vent cover was 2 small bolts in the middle, and 2 wedge pins on the outsides. The pins were removed by pulling the small round inner portion up first, then pull larger round plugs.

Working from the driver's side swing the vent cover out of the way to expose the wiper motor and housing. The washer fluid lines can remain on.

The housing is mounted with 3 bolts. I moved the motor to the new housing, setting it up in the "wipers down" position. I'm not sure if it can be put together any other way. It was much easier to put it all back together and only required one repositioning of the passenger side wiper arm to get it in the proper position.

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Glad I found this wiki, it has saved me alot of time. The only thing that I would add is that you need to use the blue thread locker on the nut that holds the motor arm in place at the bottom of the motor. Obviously the arm needs to be adjusted properly (all the way down) when installing this nut.

Wow, your article saved me hundreds of dollars! I am not a mechanic, but your instructions were thorough enough to make me confident in trying the wiper transmission repair.

Since a picture is worth a thousand words, here is a good video that shows how to install/remove the transmission:

http://www.YouTube.com/watch?v=GfNL0Vc_B5Y

Just a note, instead of removing the electrical connector from the wiper motor (and risk breaking the plug), it is far easier to remove the motor from the transmission. There are three Torx bolts and one nut, then the motor comes off! It can stay in the engine compartment while you remove the transmission to work on it.

Lastly, I used the 3" mend plates from Home Depot which worked perfectly. However, the two 2-1/2" bolts that you suggested are way too long. 1-1/2" x 1/4" bolts are perfect for the job. With two lock washers and one nylon locking nut, this length is fine.

Thanks again for the repair instructions! They truly were valuable.