V70 Rear Wiper Fix

Jack Rock »

I finally got tired of looking at the rear wiper arm parked at the 1:30 position of my V70. It wasn’t just a matter of
repositioning the wiper arm because this would just cause it to wipe the tailgate. The entire window would get wiped – it
would go from 1:30 to 3:00 back to 9:00 then home to 1:30. I searched around this site and found at least one other person
with this problem but no solution, so here’s my first how-to.

Remove the wiper arm with a 13mm wrench and leave the nut off.

Remove center cap trim by pulling towards you 1/2″ then up.

Pry tailgate release trim out from the top then slide up. This was very hard and I got several small cracks be careful.

You don’t need to take all of the door skin off, I just released the top by working one set of fingers between the
plastic and the window and the other in the hole created by removing the center cap, then pull up. You can see how the
clips are attached in the picture. You should now be able to reach in to take out the wiper assembly.

Disconnect the electrical connector and remove three bolts with a 10mm socket. The wiper assembly should slide right out
of the window grommet.

Next I fastened the assembly on my work bench. I put the wiper arm nut back on tight and put a wrench on it to simulate the
wiper arm, hooked up a 12V power supply and watched how it operated. I found that the linkage that attaches to the motor
itself must have slipped somehow at one point because the motor only spins in one direction and stops in the same spot every time. In order to get the motor to stop at home you need to give the yellow wire 12 volts but when you turn off the power
it just stops, so simply touch 12 volts to the orange (this is the intermittent) until it goes home.

Remove the nut on the motor shaft, pry off the linkage. At this point I spent a bunch of time unseizing the wiper shaft.
There’s a small cir-clip near the wiper arm nut, just pry it off and tap the shaft out from the assembly (the motor side
linkage must be off for this to come out). I used emery cloth on the shaft and a fine file for the bushing because of the
amount of corrosion then applied some grease to the shaft and put it back together.

Rotate the wiper arm wrench until the motor side looks like the ‘after’ picture (note the two linkages are parallel to each other)and reattach the motor side linkage. Run the motor again and repeat the process as needed. It took me a couple attempts to get it perfect, the first time there was still about a 1/2″ dip of the wrench when the motor started.

To reinstall the door trim, I got lucky and just reused the clips that were still attached to the panel. Give them a quarter
turn and pull out, then slide them in the slot on the gate. Then just push the panel into the gate and they should just
snap into place.

V70 Rear Wiper removal and fix

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Last Updated on August 12, 2025