Learned this lesson the hard way. Basically couple days ago on my way to St. Louis Bread Co for a coffee, the windshield wiper in my car stopped working (it was raining). To make things worse, I can hear the motor was still trying to rotate and making the annoying noises. Upon arrival at the Bread Co., I spent 10 minutes and finally turned off the motor and restore the windshield wiper to original position. But I have another problem. It was raining, and sometimes it was raining hard, and I need to get back to home for the day (I did not want leave my car near my work place). So what I do?
I drove along the Olive road, after driving for a while when the window is “dirty”, I drove off the Olive and to a parking lot, manually clean up the Window, back to the road. I had to stop 4 times in this 12 miles trip. Luckily the heavy rain turned into shower so it gave me some relief.
After the diagnosis at repair shop, the windshield wiper motor is indeed broken. Looking back, I think I may have done two things wrong to break it (if it’s my fault).
1) From time to time I tried to stretch the Windshield wiper blade life as much as possible, which means sometimes even if I hear the noise of wiper (it needs replacement), I still used it. To avoid the annoying noise from wiper, I flip the switch of wiper on and off quickly.
2) At one time (recently), I tried to install the replacement blade myself, but I have not done correctly (for one blade), which means, the pressure of 2 wiper blades will be different when they do the work.
I think my mistake (if any), is similar to some of the austerity measure done by “frugal people” who tries to cut own hair, but end up paying more to barber to fix it. Similar arguments goes to the “DIY” home modeling projects went bad.