About a week ago my wiper motor started making a strange growling noise. Up until then it had always been pretty quiet. So today I pulled the motor out and ran it (completely disconnected from the linkage) and confirmed that it was the motor that was making the noise. I went to Napa and got and installed a new motor (remanufactured), but to my disappointment, this motor is making almost exactly the same noise.

I'm now wondering if I should pull this "new" motor and ask to trade for another, or if I should assume that this is somehow a normal noise and just live with it? I feel like I just wasted nearly $70, since my old motor was doing the exact same thing (which led me to believe that it was about to fail). Any thoughts?

(Forgot to say...it's a '93 F150)

 

My 94 doesn't make any odd noise that I notice inside the cab and I frequently drive with the radio off.

Cheers,
Popa Tim

 

My original wiper motor had a bad park switch and was a bit noisy. I got a reman unit from NAPA. It is very quiet when it runs. If it was mine it would pull it and return it to NAPA for a replacement.

 

The motor has a rotary switch attached to it. The switch is gear driven, maybe the switch is making the noise? Did you run the bare motor by itself, or did you bolt your old park switch onto the new motor when you tested it?
My 92 F150 original wiper motor and assy. doesn't make much noise.

 

Well, I can't explain it, but when I tried the new motor again later that night it sounded just fine to me. So I don't know if I'm losing my mind and/or my hearing ;-) but all seems to be ok now.

I did run the old motor removed from the truck, and it was still "growling." However I did not run the new motor before installing it - I wanted to but there was a sticker on there saying something like "this motor must be installed before running." The new (reman) motor came with the park switch installed on it, so I just changed over the mounting plate and crank.

Thanks for everyone's replies - this board is such a great resource! I haven't had a rainy day yet to really put it to the test, but thankfully this new motor seems to be fine now.