There is an old joke about what men are good for: the punch line reads something like killing spiders, barbecue and oil changes.   I’d like to pretend that I’m a handy person, but when the truth comes right down to it, I pretty much consider myself a software guy, not a hardware guy.   Still, I think the software mentality teaches you to think about debugging in a more general sense, and occasionally it pays off.

Like today.  I mentioned briefly that my right windshield wiper had failed during my trip to Truckee over New Years.   While occasionally the wiper would twitch, it wouldn’t move very regularly, but would occasionally catch and flop all the way over to the left side, and then get in the way of the left wiper blade.   I was going to take it into a garage to have them charge me $50, but as I was waiting for my wife to get showered, I decided to give it a couple of minutes of my own attention.

I felt that it must be something minor, rather than a motor failure.  Had the motor failed, it would have been likely been catastrophic: the wiper blade wouldn’t twitch at all.  I felt it must have been in some part of the linkage that connects the wiper motor.  I had no idea what that linkage might be, having never really examined this stuff before, but it was a working hypothesis.

I marched out to the car, undid the rubber bands that Carmen had set up to keep the blades from flopping around during our trip home (while still moving I might add, a splendid McGyver moment for her) and stared at it for a moment.  I picked up the blade and tried to move it along its normal motion.  It moved easily, freely.   I then did the same to the one that worked.   It didn’t move at all.  Ahah!  I next popped the small plastic cap off at the base of the wiper arm, revealing a 5/8 inch nut.  It was finger loose.  Ahah!   Back to find a 5/8 socket.   A simple bit of tightening, and it worked.  For a minute.   Then it was loose again.   This time I really tightened it.  And voila!  It appears to function.

Saved myself a trip to the garage and some annoyingly large amount of money for a simple bolt tightening.

I feel useful today.