Technical Marea Weekend Stuck Rear Wiper Fixing Step By Step

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Technical Marea Weekend Stuck Rear Wiper Fixing Step By Step

JTDLee

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These Marea Weekend rear wipers stop working over time. Did mine last week. It was seized solid, now superb. It is almost always the shaft being seized, not the cog-box or motor being ****ed. I have an easier remedy than the circlip removal as they are hard to get off and often rusted. You need wd40 or equivalent, and 3in1 type oil, a junior hacksaw, some turps and some wide gaffer tape and tissue. And a small flat electrical screwdriver, a posidrive and some Allen/hex keys. Whole process about 30 mins.

1) Remove wiper arm, undoing nut on base after applying wd40 to it liberally the day before to allow penetration - they get stiff and so does the wiper arm onto it's splined shaft. If stubborn, tap with hammer, apply more Wd40. Remove bootlid inner panel - with boot open, lever off 2 red reflective covers either side and the posi screws they hide, and 1 screw behind inner door handle. Panel with then pull off from its push clip mountings.

2) Undo allen bolts and electrical block connector and take the unit out, then hold the unit securely in a vice with the wiper end of the shaft higher than the cogs and motor end.

2) There is a metal shaft running inside a plastic sheath/shaft and this is ceased. At the wiper end, gently lever a 1mm gap with a small flat electrical screwdriver between the circlip and the end of the plastic cover/shaft. Liberally squirt in gap with wd40.

3) With hacksaw, on top of the plastic shaft, saw down a groove into it just until you get past the plastic to the inner shaft, taking care and checking every 2 saw strokes you haven't gone too far. No need to start cutting inner shaft, just get past the plastic. You should be left with an 8mm or so groove with a 2-3mm slot at the bottom of it exposing the inner metal shaft. Cut 2 of these groves at approx thirds along the plastic shaft.

4) Using vice jaw padding, re-clamp unit in vice just by the splined wiper end, again so shaft runs downhill to motor end, and your cut grooves facing upwards on the top. Liberally apply WD40 to the grooves, and work the mechanism by hand holding the cog box. After a few mins and your working and squirting wd40, the mechanism becomes free and you will see all the rusty sludgy stuff coming from the grooves.

5) When you've got the wd40 right in to the bottom, re clamp so shaft now flows downhill and the crud-carrying lube can drain out a bit with the crud too, work for a few mins, lots more WD40. Then re-clamp in vice so shaft slopes downhill towards cog box again and add lots of 3in1 oil or similar under the circlip and into your grooves. Keep working.

6) When happy with thorough lubrication, wipe oil off outside of shaft with turps, and dry with tissue. Keep grooves facing up. Cut enough gaffer tape to go round the shaft once, covering the grooves and sealing them. Apply.

7) Re-fit unit and trim panel. Refit wiper blade. Every 6 months, lift flap on base of wiper, lever the circlip up again by 1mm or so and apply a few drops of 3in1 oil behind it, and it will travel downhill lubricating the shaft. You will have no further problems I would think. :)

If you can get the circlip off, follow my instructions without cutting the grooves and lubricate behind the circlip with it at the top so the oil runs down and work the mechanism back and forth in the same way until freed, then replace circlip.

P.S., if you mess it up and saw right into the metal wiper shaft, you are a 'narna and it isn't my responsibility.:D

Happy wiping.
 
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Yes, but very difficult to get any grease into the tight fit, as I see no way of getting the shaft out of the tight sleeve without breaking it.
 
I'm tagging this post on the end of an old thread as its possibly most useful for folk finding it via a search engine - like me.

I've just gone through the exercise of thoroughly pulling apart the Marea rear wiper unit, and have a few thoughts which may help others thinking about doing the same, plus save some time going down blind alleys.

I repeat the picture that Hellcat posted in this thread:

https://www.fiatforum.com/bravo-brava/72647-rear-wiper-motor.html?highlight=Rear+wiper+motor

at the end of this post.

There seem to be two main failure modes. Hellcat had a naffed motor.
Many others have a seized main rotor. Mine was the latter, going slower and slower until it finally jammed - but not totally.
If you pull out the unit completely and put power to motor - you CAN reverse the polarity and its best to try BOTH ways - if it moves a bit, the motor is probably OK, and I think it's best not to try removing it by the wrenching the 4 bending tabs that hold it ion (great engineering, Fiat!)

Hellcat shows the unit fully dismembered - others have said they couldn't get the wiper rotor out without snapping it.
You have to, if you want to fully solve the problem. There is a circlip at the end of the outer plastic sleeve of the main rotor, which I had no trouble getting off, along with the thin washer underneath. I guess if these are corroded, they could break, but they should be replaceable easier than finding a Weekend with a working rear wiper unit in the scrappy - they aren't THAT common!

What no-one has mentioned is that a few mm further down the inner, metal shaft is a tight fitting o-ring that SHOULD keep out the crud that causes corrosion further down the shaft. It's the failure of that o-ring to seal that seems to be causing the jamming by corrosion. For a long time yesterday I thought the cogs in the gearbox were held in by something I couldn't fathom - but actually they SHOULD come out with the wiper shaft (both inner & outer shaft pieces SHOULD push out, as Hellcat shows).

I NEVER got the outer shaft casing (plastic & steel insert) to push though towards the cogs. Why, I don't know, but even when it was the only piece left in place, it wouldn't "pop out" like it plainly should - even when in a wide vice pushing against the housing casing-cast at near-to-breaking-point forces.

But I could, slowly, get the inside shaft (that actually couples to the wiper) to (grindingly) push though the outer casing my using WD40 plus plastic-faced hammer taps while supporting the case over a wooden-jawed vice which supported the casing edges. Be careful - it only looks like a flimsy zinc casting or some such. It jammed when 90% out - that is where the corrosion beyond the o-ring had "expanded" the shaft and wouldn't trivially go through the lower steel bearing visible at the cog end. Mucho WD 40, going backwards and forwards dislodging enough (black) corrosion to finally let the plastic hammer blows get it through without the blows being hard enough to crack the casing.

From there, it's straightforward, removing the 3cm length of black shaft corrosion causing all the trouble (with a combo of wire wheel and fine corundum paper, revealing a slightly pitted shaft), then reassembling with suitable lubricant. I used a fine waterproof lithium grease made for bicycle gears which inevitably are exposed to much more British rain/salted roads than the Fiat designers seem capable of predicting (just like the pins forming the pivot for the tailgate release handle that got the same treatment a while back!)

When reassembled, a test with direct battery shows a MASSIVE improvement, and I'm confident that packing the shaft with fine waterproof lube will see the unit outlast the rest of the car.

A final note. The white cog, with the shaped metal commutator on the back, was drowning in the thick grease originally put in the unit at manufacture, but this had not caused contact problems (but can't have helped). But one the three phosphor-bronze brushes that contact to it had the flat "fingertip" missing - but still seemed to contact OK!
-
Postscript. After putting the assembly back on the rear door successfully, it struck me how most of the problems could have been prevented if the external rubber boot, that the shaft goes through, had been made long enough to push up against the blade assembly when the attaching nut were screwed down. So, I looked around, and found a bit of soft, clear plastic tube that is used in brewing kits or aquaria (it was actually Nalgene PVC 180 tubing, 10mm ID). I cut a piece 13mm long, slipped in on the bare shaft before attaching the wiper.
Voila! The entire shaft is now pretty much sealed off from the outside, and I'm even more confident I won't need to come back to this again - at least not for corrosion reasons.

Here's my pic of that final mod, plus Hellcat's disassembly pic:
 

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