Wife said the front windshield wipers were noisy, after a bothersome back-and-forth, she finally indicated they were "chattering." Hindsight, it would have been better for me to just drive it and see for myself. Anyway, bought new blades (not just the refills) and installed them last night. Learning from my mistakes, I drove the car operated the wipers and now there is a horrible squeak. BUT: It seems as if it is coming from the area of the actual wiper assembly and not from the wiper -- you know from underneath the black plastic cap that covers the end of the passenger side wiper -- pix below. Anyway, before I get into to this....I assume I can pry off the black plastic cap, but is there any "user serviceable parts" under there that might be causing this noise? Anyone dealt with this before? Squirt some TriFlow or Silicone spray in there?
Sorry, would delete this if I could. But, come to think of it, it may help someone. Grabbed wife's car at lunch. Put the OLD PASSENGER side wiper back on. Turned on the wipers and all is silent. And, the mix is doing a great job of getting the water off the glass. So, at the moment there is a new driver side wiper and an old passenger side. Some day in the future, may pick up a new passenger side. NAPA Accu-Fits if anyone cares (got the passenger side for $8). As for my "hearing" squeaking coming from the assembly, I am guess I actually heard it from the wiper, but at my age, hearing is not exactly perfect.
If you were to decide the arm assembly was the problem (instead of the wiper rubber) the solution would be to unbolt the arm. Do not try to pry off the metal cover. Once the arm is removed, you can look at the bottom side and lubricate the pivot points. Also, a relatively easy way to determine the source of the noise is simply to raise up the wiper arms from the windshield, 90 degrees. Then operate the motor and see if the noise remains or not. If not then the wiper rubber contacting the glass is the most likely suspect.
That definitely can be a thing. In my experience, the cover is rather difficult to take off without damage, and there wasn't any reason to, because if your photo had been taken with the arm upside down, you would clearly see the bearings are accessible from the bottom. -Chap
Thank you both for the responses. It's my wife's care as I said, and I won't have access to it until tonight so cannot take a look, but... Chap, if I understand you correctly, I can just use a plastic nozzle or something and spray underneath the plastic cap? Or, is everything I need to spray exposed when the wiper arm moves with the black plastic cap still firmly in place? I guess what I really don't understand is when you say the bearings are accessible from the bottom? And, I did try to pull off the plastic cap, but since it was being very difficult, I finally gave up and decided to post my question before I broke something. Glad I did post!
Sorry, did not really understand any of this -- I can be a bit dense at times. So, I actually did find that the bearings were making a bit of noise, not a lot, but a bit. So, I stuck the extension tube on my can of TriFlow lubricant and sort of guided the end of the tube into several spots under the black plastic cap that seemed to be the pivot points. Sprayed a fair amount of TriFlow in, let it sit for about five minutes and the noise was gone. Maybe not by the book, but seemed to work.
