Driving home tonight, wipers started, then did not work at all?

Question

Cold, but no weather to speak of, started ok, radio and heater working,1995 Isuzu rodeo,145,000 miles. the wipers went on once, and stopped. I heard the motor trying to work, and stopped X3 to get them moving, but no joy, before tonight, the wipers working fine (not slow, or any delay), of course tonight wx <30, snow and freezing rain earlier (wipers worked ok then) anything I can do before I take it to the shop?
Any and all answers welcome!
Thanks
Greg

Answer 1

motor's working, wipers don't move? Possible a piece of the mechanical linkage inside the cowl disconnected itself. Not familiar with Subaru, but had that happen on an old minivan once. Pieced it back together with a couple bits out of my spare parts bin in the basement.

Answer 2

What position did they stop in?
Almost all wipers are set up with a switch or other device that stops the blades at the park position. Then there is a bypass to that switch and motor the blades past the park position. When you turn power, all you are doing is providing power to that bypass. This is best shown when you turn off the ignition in mid-sweep - the blades stop. Even if you turn off the wiper switch, when the ignition is turned on, the blades sweep across the windshield to the park where they stop. (Or the motor tries to move them if they are frozen to the windshield.)
So you may have a bad circuit to the park position - hard to fix - or you may have burned out the motor - hard to fix - or you may have blown a fuse before the motor would have burned out - easy to fix. Look at your fuses first. See if you can move the wipers by hand (not all wipers allow this) and see if they sweep once.