Hi all,
In Rockhampton it rains once every Blue moon.
In yesterdays's blue moon, with lightning and thunder and et stuff falling from the sky, my 71 bug's wipers decided to give up!!
The drivers side went beserk and flung itself to point horizontally towards the right, and just wont budge. The passenger side simply stayed in the upright (end of loop position), also firmly fixed into that position.
Any ideas before I start tinkering on the weekend.
And yes it is supossed to storm today and then have rain set in for 2 - 3 days!!!

OK.
Could smell something burning. Checked and wiper motor gave me third degree burn (kid you not). Disconnected all wires.
Is it safe to assume motor is burnt out??

You would think so...is the mechanism jammed up preventing the motor from turning?

I beleive so. Nothing wants to move. Will pull out whole assembly on saturday.

There are two sets of wires to motor. Do these correspond to the two speeds of the wipers?

Hope your burn isn't too bad!

When I first got my Beetle, the wipers were working with the main brown wire cut in half (I didn't know it was cut until I went to install my stereo 2.5 months later!)

Good luck getting yours fixed and working again.

ive had this happen to me when driving home from work at midnight in a storm. wipers slowed right down and then just stopped moving.

i drove the rest of the way home with my head out the window needless to say i got pretty wet.

turned out the be the resistor for the 6 volt motor.