For a while the wipers on my trusty 306 were failing to start in cold weather and when initially activated. The sweep wasn’t particularly powerful either, suspecting an electrical fault, purchased a new unit from a breakers.

Within a few days the unit arrived ~£25. Fitting wasn’t particularly difficult, took around 30mins to fit, without the aid of instructions or the great video I found afterwards.

Peugeot 306 – Fitting a wiper motor & armature

Yet again drainage is responsible for repair work. Normally you’d be pretty safe to do this task with battery connected, but I found the wiper motor sat in a pool of water. The water running of the windscreen on the drivers side drains via a small hole in the plastic tray into the wheel arch. Feeling around the arch I located a screw which has fallen into the hole and along with debris had blocked the drain.

There was a bolt missing from armature fixing plate, this was it! The position would have made it impossible to work loose, the likely explanation is that the bolt has been placed in the drain tray while working on car – the only time this area has been touched was when the heater matrix was replaced by a Peugeot dealership!

As in the video above, the drainage areas accumulate a lot of mud, oil and leaves. Clearing the caked up mess can save repair work later on. It’s a task that requires few or no parts to be removed from the car, but I’ve never heard it mentioned as a part of routine checks…