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Thingster Samba Member
Joined: February 28, 2006 Posts: 150 Location: Webster Groves, MO
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Posted: Mon Mar 06, 2006 12:26 am Post subject: Wiper motor and wiper motor rebuild |
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Anyone have a working wiper motor for a Thing to sell? I need one to pass inspection to renew plates. Let me know what's out there.
Justin _________________ "I like to take my Thing out and play with it."
1974 Thing (Play Toy)
1957 Sedan(Show Car)
1954 Sedan (On the back burner) |
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n0limdon Samba Member
Joined: October 06, 2005 Posts: 192 Location: Cresco, Ia.
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Posted: Mon Mar 06, 2006 12:02 pm Post subject: |
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There is one on ebay item #4618881866, however it is in Germany and shipping is $43. Current bid is around 18+. Have you tried Mike Basso at Things Unlimited? |
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kubelmann Samba Member

Joined: April 13, 2003 Posts: 3268
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Posted: Mon Mar 06, 2006 5:54 pm Post subject: |
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Wiper motors can be repaired by a few of us thing lovers.
Last edited by kubelmann on Sun Oct 08, 2006 8:08 am; edited 1 time in total |
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Thingster Samba Member
Joined: February 28, 2006 Posts: 150 Location: Webster Groves, MO
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Posted: Mon Mar 06, 2006 10:16 pm Post subject: |
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is there a readily available rebuild kit for the VW wiper motors, or is it alot of parts collection? I don't care if the wipers park, all they need to do is wipe.
just looking at the motor it's obvious why it doesn't work. The armature is cocked and is shorting to the windings. By this I assume there's just a bad support bushing somewhere down in there.
I thought about taking a bug motor I have and modding it to work, but that's last resort.
Justin _________________ "I like to take my Thing out and play with it."
1974 Thing (Play Toy)
1957 Sedan(Show Car)
1954 Sedan (On the back burner) |
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Ferretkona Samba Member

Joined: December 03, 2005 Posts: 1306 Location: Columbia, CA
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Posted: Tue Mar 07, 2006 1:23 am Post subject: |
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If you can find a good tool repair shop, you could ask them to take a look. They could check the brushes and bushings. |
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kubelmann Samba Member

Joined: April 13, 2003 Posts: 3268
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Posted: Tue Mar 07, 2006 5:51 pm Post subject: |
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I beleive that the inside motor parts of a 67 wiper motor are the same as a Thing. K-mann |
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Thingster Samba Member
Joined: February 28, 2006 Posts: 150 Location: Webster Groves, MO
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Posted: Tue Mar 07, 2006 11:03 pm Post subject: |
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I checked the 4 bug motors i have around and they all have the crank directly riveted to the output shaft. The thing has the crank e-clipped to the shaft.
However, i don't know what years the motors I have came off of and if -only- the '67 is similar, odds are i don't have one around.
Justin
EDIT: All the bug motors I've seen look like this
http://www.thesamba.com/vw/classifieds/detail.php?id=284333 _________________ "I like to take my Thing out and play with it."
1974 Thing (Play Toy)
1957 Sedan(Show Car)
1954 Sedan (On the back burner) |
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Al Capulco Samba Member

Joined: October 31, 2005 Posts: 538 Location: Northridge, CA.
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Posted: Tue Mar 07, 2006 11:14 pm Post subject: |
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I have one or I can fix yours if it is not in too bad of shape, |
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Ferretkona Samba Member

Joined: December 03, 2005 Posts: 1306 Location: Columbia, CA
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kubelmann Samba Member

Joined: April 13, 2003 Posts: 3268
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Posted: Wed Mar 08, 2006 9:57 pm Post subject: |
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The following post is to be used at your own risk and by those that have some experience with repairing delicate automotive electrical devises. I have decided to post this as an attempt to help. It comes from the RoMTOC Thing Data CD.
The Thing wiper motor assembly is a standard DC motor
with some gears and electrical controls built in. The electrical controls are used to return the wiper arms to the parked position
when the wiper switch is turned to the 'OFF' position. During the following, be sure to keep track of all the various pieces and
screws. Clean everything as it is taken out.
¨ The wiper motor is held to the windshield by a single nut on the wiper shaft. After removing the wiper arm, the large nut,
washer, and rubber washer should come off and the wiper motor can be removed.
CAUTION!!
There are wires connected to the left side of the motor.
+-+-ONE OF THE WIRES IS HOT WHENEVER THE KEY IS ON -+-+
For safety, disconnect the battery before working on the wiper motor.
¨ There are two small screws that hold a U shaped bracket. The bracket is used to hold the wire harness to the side of the motor.
The harness has a loop built in to provide room for the harness to flex when the windshield is lowered.
¨ Get a paper, pencil, and note the color of the wire on each lead on the wiper. There will be a brown wire. Brown is always
used for wires that goes to ground on VW's. The other wires are black, green, black with a white stripe, and black with a green
stripe. These are the power leads.
¨ There is a bail, or wire clip that holds on the cover to the motor, like the ones that hold on the valve covers. Slide it to one side
and remove the cover. Remove the bail and the plastic gasket that seals the cover to the housing.
¨ On the side of the motor where the wires were connected, there is a plate held in place with two screws. Remove the screws,
plate and insulating paper. Gently slide the plastic bracket that holds the connectors in place, straight up. It should be
connected to the rest of the motor with two wires which are connected to the brushes.
¨ On the back of the plastic assembly, there are copper spring contacts. They are moved by a pin that sticks out from the side of
the motor. Remove the pin by pulling it out.
¨ Inside the motor, you will see the brushes that provide connections to the rotor. That part is wrapped with a lot
of copper wire and spins inside the frame. Two of the brushes should have a wire that goes to the plastic terminal strip removed
previously. The third brush has a braided wire that is connected to a screw on the frame of the motor.
¨ The bracket that holds the three brushes and holds in the top of the rotor is held in place by two screws. Remove the screws and
gently lift off the bracket. Try to keep the brushes from coming out of their holders.
¨ Now, the rotor can be lifted out of the frame of the motor. Be careful not to nick the copper wires when prying it out. It will be
'stuck' because there is a strong magnet inside the frame.
¨ Remove the other two screws on the top of the magnetic frame and remove it from the motor housing.
¨ Now turn the assembly over so that the main wiper shaft is pointing up. There are four screws holding the cover in place.
Remove them and lift the plate up off the wiper shaft.
¨ This reveals the first gear assembly. These very large gears are used to provide the oscillating movement to the main shaft.
Make notes regarding the position of the gears for use during assembly.
¨ There is a retaining clip on one of the shafts. Remove it and lift the gear assembly out. There will probably be a lot of old grease
that has gotten hard and needs to be cleaned out.
¨ After the upper gear assembly is removed, and the grease cleaned out, remove the three screws holding the upper gear case to the motor
frame. The case and the cover for the lower gear case will now come off and the speed reduction gears will come off with it.
¨ Before the cover is completely removed, note the position of the gears!!!!!!!!! Two gears will come off. One large,
and one small. These also, will be caked with old grease, which must be cleaned.
¨ On the larger gear, there is a plastic cam with a flat spot on one side. This cam is used to push the pin out the side of the motor,
that is used to close the contacts, that is used to keep the motor turning until the wiper arms are back to the home position when
the switch is turned off.
The motor is now completely disassembled. Assemble in the reverse manner. During assembly, watch the following.
¨ Replace the grease on the upper and lower gears with wheel bearing grease.
¨ The two speed reduction gears must be replaced with the smaller one placed between the larger one and the cover plate. It is easy when there is a lot of grease holding all the parts together.
¨ To get the proper position on the upper gears, insert the commutator shaft through the housing the way it would be but without the magnet frame installed. There are gear teeth on the end of the rotor shaft that engage with the speed reduction gears. You can spin the rotor, which will move the speed reduction gears, and will move the upper gears. When the upper gears are properly aligned, they will move through the complete cycle without binding or hitting the side of the case.
¨ The main shaft may have become corroded which will cause it to bind in the shaft on the housing cover. Clean it and grease as necessary. I use grease that is used on bicycle wheel bearings and is considered somewhat water resistant.
¨ Remove the rotor, and reinstall the magnetic bracket. Before reinstalling the rotor, use 1000 or 1500 grit emery paper to wipe the slotted copper contacts on the top of the unit. Shine them up. After doing that, use an xacto knife and clean out any copper dust or any other dirt that may be in the slots between the copper contacts.
¨ If you have an ohmmeter, use it to verify continuity between the copper segments on the opposite side of the shaft. If there is no continuity, the windings may be bad and the rotor may have to be rewound.
¨ Check the brushes. They should slide easily inside their holders. Hopefully, they did not come out of the holders when the bracket was removed from the motor. If they did, the easiest way to replace them is to pry open the back of each brush holder, remove the spring, and slide the brush into the holder. Replace the bracket over the end of the rotor, and screw it down. Then, slide the springs back into the holders, and bend
the tabs back over the ends to hold everything in place. Try to bend the brush housing tab as little as possible because if it breaks off, it may be difficult to salvage the job.
¨ Check the wires that go from the brush holders to the plastic bracket that mounts on the end of the housing. If they are frayed or the insulation is cracked, get out the soldering iron and replace them.
¨ Be sure to replace the pin in the side of the motor housing before sliding in the plastic bracket.
¨ Do not connect the wiper arms to the wiper motor shaft until you have connected the wires to the motor and run the motor through a complete cycle. Let the motor stop by itself when the switch is turned off. Failure to do this may result in the wiper arms scratching the paint, as they may not be properly aligned.
Wiper motor repair
To "rebuild" a Type 181 wiper motor it is necessary to replace the armature, and possibly the brush assembly. These parts can be salvaged from a type 1, two speed, 12-volt wiper motor manufactured by SWF. This type of motor has a bail to retain the cover and is stamped SWF directly under the bail, it will look very similar to a Thing motor. Unfortunately, I do not know what years this type of motor was used in Bugs. After the correct wiper motor is acquired, it is a simple process to remove the two screws retaining the brush holder, remove the old armature, and replace with the "new" armature. Replacement of the brush assembly can be accomplished by unsoldering the brown and black wires from the type 1 terminal card, and resoldering to the type 181 terminal card in the same locations. Once the motor is reassembled clearances "a" and "b" need to be set according to the VW repair manual section 8.0. Additionally, it is very important to determine what caused the motor to fail in the first place; the troubleshooting section of the VW manual is a good place to start. I also suggest reading the precaution section 8.2. |
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omg1 Samba Member
Joined: March 31, 2005 Posts: 48 Location: Johnstown, PA
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Posted: Thu Mar 09, 2006 11:24 am Post subject: |
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JC Whitney sells generic wiper motors that look pretty close. One of the guys in my area hooked one up, and you have to be a real VW enthusiast to notice it's not stock. At least it would get you through inspection. |
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Thingster Samba Member
Joined: February 28, 2006 Posts: 150 Location: Webster Groves, MO
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Posted: Thu Mar 09, 2006 1:49 pm Post subject: |
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i'm going to start off by looking for a bug motor that might happen to work. Looking at it, I could pretty easily make a later round style motor work, but it would be obviously not original.
I'm heading home this weekend, gonna stop at the local VW shop and see if he'll let me dig through his box of wiper motors.
Justin _________________ "I like to take my Thing out and play with it."
1974 Thing (Play Toy)
1957 Sedan(Show Car)
1954 Sedan (On the back burner) |
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kubelmann Samba Member

Joined: April 13, 2003 Posts: 3268
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Posted: Thu Mar 09, 2006 6:01 pm Post subject: |
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There is a pciture on the Samba Gallery of a Thing with a round late model wiper motor adapted to a Thing. The pciture does not show how it bolted up but it leads one to believe that it is a possible solution. Let us know. |
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mytype181 Samba Member
Joined: August 05, 2002 Posts: 74 Location: South West
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Posted: Fri Mar 10, 2006 2:14 pm Post subject: |
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Does this help any?
Here is a link to a picture of my first Thing. It was later restored to the great looking yellow Thing you can see in my gallery. It didn't have an original Thing wiper motor as you can see.
http://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/album_page.php?pic_id=19100
I knew nothing about VW Thing's except for the research I had done during my search for one. But I did know the motor was not correct on this Thing. The person that sold me the Thing said it was from a bettle, but I can remember what year.
If interested I can search my pictures I have in archives to see if I have a close-up picture of the motor as well as how the wires were connected.
It worked really great, after the restoration I changed it out with an original Thing wiper motor...heck I might still even have that old motor in the garage somewhere....will advise if so.
B.
'74
'72 |
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kubelmann Samba Member

Joined: April 13, 2003 Posts: 3268
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Posted: Fri Mar 10, 2006 6:11 pm Post subject: |
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Perfect.. That is the picture I was talking about. Cool solution. I too have a few of those motors laying around... It would be a cool procedure to document for those who are not on the resto but want a working wiper system. I once was driving home from Missouri to Colorado and my wiper motor died. Of course it was during an outragous rain storm. So we took off our shoe laces and tied them to the wiper arms and ran them through the wing vents and manually wiped the windows down the highway. It got us home adn left us with a cool story to tell. K-mann |
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Captain Spalding Samba Member

Joined: February 19, 2005 Posts: 2519 Location: . . . in denial.
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Posted: Fri Mar 10, 2006 8:38 pm Post subject: |
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omg1 wrote: |
JC Whitney sells generic wiper motors that look pretty close. One of the guys in my area hooked one up, and you have to be a real VW enthusiast to notice it's not stock. At least it would get you through inspection. |
Several possibilities there, if you just want to pass inspection.
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mytype181 Samba Member
Joined: August 05, 2002 Posts: 74 Location: South West
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Posted: Fri Mar 10, 2006 9:55 pm Post subject: |
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Forgot to mention in my first post that there is another motor that was on a '74 Thing a bought from a guy here in TX a few years back. This wiper motor was from JC Whitney check the link below.
http://www.jcwhitney.com/autoparts/Product/tf-Brow...06/c-10101
It is item # ZX719906T if the above link doesn't work.
Now if you just in need of a wiper motor and don't care about a few 'lil issues like having to turn it off/out from the motor itself, having only one speed and not having the wiper stop at the bottom of the window in the normal off position, that really doesn't sound right....does it? I hope you get the idea.
Check out the picture and you can see the on/off handle located in the front on the wiper motor. It's very basic it's either on or off nothing else, nothing fancy.
Again I'll search my picture archives and see if I can come across a close-up picture. In my gallery the wiper motor is on the "White" Thing, This is the only picture I have that shows the motor.
http://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/album_page.php?pic_id=195893
This picture does show that the motor shaft does extend further out that the original motor, but hey it work and works well. At $45 bucks it's a great for that must pass inspection Thing. Might be able to find the same motor at you local auto shop if one didnt want to order from JCW
Brent,
'74
'72 |
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Captain Spalding Samba Member

Joined: February 19, 2005 Posts: 2519 Location: . . . in denial.
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Posted: Sat Mar 11, 2006 11:29 am Post subject: |
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mytype181 wrote: |
At $45 bucks it's a great for that must pass inspection Thing. |
Can you pass inspection with only one wiper?  |
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mytype181 Samba Member
Joined: August 05, 2002 Posts: 74 Location: South West
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Posted: Sat Mar 11, 2006 4:47 pm Post subject: |
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It worked for me. There were no questions asked, nor did I start up a conversation about it when he looked at me funny after testing the wipers. |
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Thingster Samba Member
Joined: February 28, 2006 Posts: 150 Location: Webster Groves, MO
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Posted: Mon Mar 13, 2006 8:42 pm Post subject: |
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Allright, as of friday i discovered that being charged $135 for a used wiper motor or $300 for a rebuilt one is totally, completely, and wholly outrageous if you already have a thing wiper motor.
I didn't document what I did visually, but i took the advice about the SWF wiper motor one step further.
I dug through my stash of parts and found a 12V SWF wiper motor. I sat down at a table with it and the thing motor and a basic set of hand tools and got to work.
I tore both motors down until they were mechanically identical and then put the Thing head back onto the bug SWF motor. It involved a little grinding, drilling two holes, and tapping one, but I now have a totally functioning wiper motor (high speed, low speed, and park) for the absolutely outrageous price of $1.37 (I had to buy a tube of grease).
Painless, took about 2 hours including finding the bug motor in my junk, and appears totally stock. Only way you can tell it isn't stock is to COMPLETELY tear the wiper motor down and look for the piece of sheet metal I had to grind back 1/8".
Justin _________________ "I like to take my Thing out and play with it."
1974 Thing (Play Toy)
1957 Sedan(Show Car)
1954 Sedan (On the back burner) |
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