Rear wiper motor stops and starts (Alhambra)

[REDLAD]

Hi all, great site..
I have an 01 model tdi alhambra. The rear wiper motor is stopping and starting when switched on. Are the rear wiper motors as troublesome as the front wiper motors or is it just a bad wire connection?? Also I have a puddle of water in the drivers side footwell of the same car. Any help or advice is greatly appreciated..

PS.
I use this car as a taxi and the mileage is 180k miles!!
Great car apart from these issues...

Tks

[kenney]

Pull back the rubber boots and check the wiring on top of the tailgate.

[ikh1971]

if your tail gate wires are ok does your washer on the rear work ok , with the cold weather we hav had the washer connection can pop off and you then fill up the motor with water when you use the rear washers , with the water in the footwell they can be a pain on these but mainly come in via the pollen filter or sunroof drains ( if it has one )

[REDLAD]

Thanks for the reply guys.
My wiring seems to be intact on inspection. My rear washer does not work.. Is this the likely source of the water? (I do not have a sunroof)

[grumpypanda]

I have previously experienced erratic rear wiper control on our family 2000MY Alhambra TDI S and it was the wiring that was at fault. The pragmatic best fix was to have the rear wiring loom changed and I had this done by a Seat franchise garage (not cheap though, just the loom was £188).
You asked whether the water leak could be associated with the rear washer not working properly and the answer is yes. If you have water gathering in the front passenger footwell and the rear washer does not work then the rear washer pipe join located on the left hand side of the footwell has to be suspect. To get to the pipe you need to partially remove the footwell plastic trim - do this by removing the obvious screws with a posidriv screwdriver and then use a small flat blade screwdriver to prise out the covers for the other posidriv srews so you can remove them too. Pull back the trim panel a bit until you can see the rear washer pipe and you have sufficient access to fix it - just reconnecting the pipe may not be good enough, you may need to use glue to prevent a reoccurrence. You would have difficulty completely removing the trim panel unless you also remove the rear doorside foot trim plastic panel as they are so well joined at the rear door post base (flexibly) so take extra care if you do need to do that (NB that the rear trim has a clip by the rear seat belt, not just screws as for the front foot trim).

[cliffdi]

Before you go to expensive repairs, are you sure the intermittent wiper issue is a real problem? The rear wiper is designed to work intermittently as the rear windscreen doesn't get that wet when driving. I think mine gives a few wipes and then stops, wait a bit and then wipes again. Apologies if you've already considered this and there's a real problem :) The washer problem and water ingress are separate issues.

[REDLAD]

Thanks guys. The expense of getting the wiper fixed is just not worth it.. I now have bigger fish to fry as the flywheel in my gear box is now in bits. Looking at over €700 for new clutch kit alone before labour :aargh4: