in my 96 gle, when you turn on the wipers they dont work, but if u silence everything else, u can hear like a motor is running, and especially when its on the highest speed u can hear the sound highly but nothing works.

you can manually control the blades like i did that before when it rained lightly, i would just get out the car and move the blades up and down.. i know this is not supposed to happen.

please tell me what do you guys think as it will be snowing a lot more soon.

from all i read it could either be the motor or the linkage ** ?
im not sure please share experience, i can get both of them for like 25$ each on ebay but i need to know what exactly is the bad part

THANKS for reading and answering

 

You already answered your question. The motor makes noise, its working. You can move the wipers freely, that means they are disconnected from the motor.

Remove the wiper arms, pop off the cowl trim and see which connection failed. The linkage has metal arms with ball and socket pivots. The socket is plastic and wears out and falls off.

 

^ spot on. Exact same thing happened to me last winter. Had to drive to Nissan in a Snow storm with no wipers. The arm itself only cost $29. Only took about 15 mins to install it

 

Or drill a hole and put a screw trough the ball pivot and the plastic cap.

i did this, and it still strong since 3 years now.

 

need new arms myself.

 

Had similar symptoms years ago, linkage was fine but the gearbox on the motor was shot. Spent maybe $15 bucks at a junkyard and no more problems. Might be worth checking out since its only held in place by 2 or 3 bolts.