Broken Windshield Wiper
 

so my drive to work yesterday was spent trying to figure out what the loud banging noise was. i figured out the passenger side windshield wiper was 'off course' so the speak, and hitting the plastic that it normall rests on when they are switched off. it only did it when i had them on HI. on regular speeds, it did fine. it was a heavy rain and i had to use HI at some points.

i also noticed that i could turn them off and let the wipers fall back down under the hood, and turn them back on and it would fix it... untill i had to use HI again, it would just throw it off.

Today, another heavy rain. turned them on and it was just sort of flopping about in no spesific pattern. in one quick motion, the driver side wiper came down and struck it like the hand of god, knocked it back down under the hood, and just like that, it was dead. drove the whole way with one wiper. i can only imagine what oncoming drivers thought. i couldnt help but laugh the whole way.

anybody have any experience or knowledge on this sort of thing?

btw, for some unknown reason... i have 2 different kinds of wipers. the driver side is a Bosch and the passenger (the broken one) is a factory... i think.

Thanks, Chris

not sure but this may be of some help, or the gears on the wiper arm that connects to the wiper are worn?

Mine got all f****ed up one time. I was rushing to get to the hospital, and didn't have time to clean the windshield and de-ice the wipers. So I tried to grab and bang them while driving...well I found out that was a bad idea. It pulled them out of alignment.

The drivers side one would stop halfway up the window, so when they cycled, it went off the window and the passenger side went up a few inches then slammed back down.

What you'll have to do is tear up the weather stripping, pop the cowl screen and remove the arms. Once you see the motors, cycle the wipers once, the motors will turn, then go to the resting position. Replace the arms, setting the wipers in the cradled position... Done!

Just a post about my experience with a wiper issue that may help someone in the future. The video linked above helped me fix my problem on an '03 Monte 3400. Here's the link again.
Although my problem was a little different it gave me something to reference.
My problem was that the wipers arms were took off while they were up on the windshield and were put back on while they were in the down position. Causing them to be all eratic and going off the car and such.
What I did was what someone mentioned in another thread on here and took them back off then with no wiper arms attached let the wiper motor cycle normally and turned the car off. That way I was assured that the motor was in the down position. At that point I reattached the arms and tried the wipers again. They were just a little off so I repeated the aforementioned step and was sure not to move where the arms attach and that foixed my problem.
I used a 13mm socket to get the gold nuts off and then alot of force to get the arms off. I tried a little wiper/battery puller from AutoZone and it helped a little but the more I cranked down, it started riding up and scratching the post (it was like the two little claws on it were not thin enough to catch under the lip of the post to pull the arm off). I eventually tried some channel locks and a small pry car to pop the arms off.
Anyways that resolved my issues.

To me it sounds like your wiper arm stripped out buy new arm, put it on your good to go