I live in Michigan, and drive aprox. 30k miles a year (for the past 2 years) I recently got to 133K miles and Noticed my wipers struggle heavily after a spell of 7 or 8 hot humid days.
What Happened?
I went to wash the windscreen to clean of some pollen/dust, and the wipers bearly got half way through the cycle before they stopped working.

I for sure thought that the motor had just given up. Anyways, I take all weekend to diagnose the issue, checking all electrical connections. There was no issues electronically, so i decided to take the whole windshield wiper module out.

The Issue:
Grease!!! If you have hit 100K miles, I highly suggest taking out the entire assembly, and greasing all moving surfaces, especially the spindle carriers, cover them in grease and then reassemble from the beginning.

I highly recommend this!

My mistake:
The spindles where so dry and seized inside the carries that I had to use a hammer to disassemble them... Well, I broke one of the flanges that connects the module to the car.

Thanks!

 

Ten years might be just a bad as 100K miles.

 

Good points. My 2004 had 5100 miles a couple months ago, now 9,600. I changed the blades, they work fine, but checking the linkages is a good idea.

 

please describe the removal of the wiper assembly so we can understand the difficulties and effort needed to do this, thanks. woody