Hi, my family and I were on the way home in our '92 240 wagon in a rainstorm when suddenly we heard a loud popping sound that we thought at first was hail hitting the car. But then we noticed that the wipers had stopped working. I assumed it wasn't a fuse as could still hear the motor clicking and whirring. I'm going to take it to our mechanic as soon as I have a chance (when it's not raining of course), but I was wondering if anyone might know what happened. Perhaps something broke between the motor and the blades and that was the loud pop we heard?

thanks

Take a look at where the motor connects to the wiper mechanism.

To do this, remove the glove box...easy...open the glove box door and you will see about 8 to 10 phillips head screws around the edge holding the inside box in place...remove the screws and slide the box out.

you will then be able to see where the spindle from the wiper motor is bolted to the wiper arms/mechanism.

turn on the wipers and see what's up.

Turns out the passenger side transmission arm (a/k/a linkage?) needs to be replaced. Now the problem is finding one. the dealer originally said it could order one then three days later have decided they can't.

Thanks for the help.

Arm? I agree that seems unlikely and possibly explained by a mis-heard or mis-spoken comment.

Perhaps you could bring this to your tech and have her explain to you what broke.

http://cleanflametrap.com/wiper.html

You could then do the legwork to supply the part from salvage.

--
Art Benstein near Baltimore

You have to stay in shape. My grandmother started walking five miles a day when she was 60. She's 97 today and we have no idea where she is.

When you find out exactly what part of the linkage needs replacing and if you can't locate it in Brooklyn I have a parts car with all the linkage intact. I'm in Bay Shore on Long Island. -- Dave

Hi, everyone, I just thought I'd give you an update on my wiper linkage problem. I didn't examine it for myself, but my mechanic has proved very honest and competent in the past so I had no reason to doubt him. It was the linkage arm on the passenger side, the one with the cable that threads through the hole in it before going around the pulley on the linkage proper. I finally found one from Voluparts in Atlanta, which it turns out has every possible volvo part imaginable. They were great, sending me photos 3 times to make sure they were sending me the correct part. It took a considerable amount of labor time to get it in, as I knew it would, and my mechanic didn't charge me for the full time.

My 240 has suffered from the common problem of the wipers not always turning off. So I suspect that from overuse (the problem was happening since I bought the car 2 years ago with 205K on it) the transmission arm broke. Now I need to find out what's causing that problem so I don't have to go through this again. Thanks to everyone for all your helpful suggestions.

Okay, so my suggestion that it's the link to the wiper motor shaft was right. I can't believe that the link is broken, though. As I suggested, it may only be that the nut fell off. Look around for it on or under the mats. You may only need to replace that.

If you do find the nut and that's all that's required, I remember, having replaced a couple of motors, that it can be difficult to put the link back on the shaft and the nut back on it because the arm can get in the way of your wrench. The trick is to rotate the two wiper arms so that the linkage moves out of the way of the nut so you can get a wrench on it. Don't worry about the position of the wipers, as their linkage can only fit on the wiper motor shaft the right way (it's a "keyed" hole), so everything will be lined up when you're finished.

Sorry, but have you looked?

basically talking about an ärm" that connects to a motor. What happened to the ARM that caused it to need a replacement.

I mean we are not talking 5000RPM Huge torque here...


It's just a wiper.


BE SUSPECT

LOOK FOR YOURSELF

That loud popping sound is disconcerting -- it may be a broken cable (that links the two wipers), or a cable that slipped off its pulley, but then at least the right wiper (I think) would continue to turn.

Another cause of the sound could be that the nut linking the motor shaft to the right wiper might have fallen off, and the shaft released or dropped the link to the wipers. I'm not really sure what that would sound like, but under the torque of the motor, it's a possibility -- and that would knock out both wipers, so keep it in mind.

At first I thought that maybe the wiper arms started slipping around their shafts because they're only held by a bunch of very shallow longitudinal grooves on both the wipers' shafts and their "sockets" (for lack of a better term) on the base of the arms -- these wear out eventually, faster if the nut on top isn't tight and lets them slip. But in further consideration, it's very unlikely -- what are the odds that both arms would start slipping simultaneously? They're two completely independent events.

Good luck.