Wipers acting up...

[1986F150Six]

My son's 1984 F150.

He mentioned that they were slow and hesitant to start. This is intermittent in that sometimes it does this and at other times, not. It always is on first usage, when it does act up. I observed an initial start and once the switch is turned on, the wiper arms hesitate and then jerks multiple times. Each time it jerks, the wiper blade moves very little and the first sweep takes maybe 10 seconds. Once the arm returns to the starting position, the wipers work normally.

As the wiper arm was going through this hesitant "twitching", I attempted to assist the motor by pulling the arm with my hand. There was no difference in speed.

By the way, this truck has intermittent wipers. It acts the same [when it acts up] whether the switch is turned to slow, high or intermittent.

I cleaned the terminals [original wiper motor] as well as the ground cable. As of today, the wipers are performing normally.

Thoughts, please!

[Gary Lewis]

David - My first thought as I was reading your post, before I got to the bottom, was that you have a ground problem.  Then I saw where you cleaned the contacts and the ground connection, and seemingly it is working correctly.  At least for now.

It did that intermittently before, so do you think it will do that again?

[1986F150Six]

Time will tell.

[grumpin]

My first thought was a weak motor. But hopefully cleaning up those contacts does the trick!