Last modified 07 July, 2023
So yeah journey in the car coming back home and naturally got bugs on the windscreen and pulled on the lever for the screen wash. Bad choice.
Not a lot happened other than the wipers smearing the windscreen with the bugs and crap and whatnot and the merest hint of splash of water on the trim in
of the windscreen. Well gosh, not a great start. Got home so figured right lets have a poke around in the washer jets see what's happening. Cue me stabbing
them a pin and cue naff all really happening every time I pulled on the washer stalk. So... quick call to Jaffa and he's like yeah drop by and we can check the
jets but not going to be about for long to do any looking at it. So turns out jets are fine and clear though i might have broken the one way valves ooooppps though
it does mean looking suspiciously at the washer pumps and pipe work.
As the washer jets were still off the car and pipes sticking up through the bonnet holes and we quickly established that flow through those pipes was at best
rubbish bordering on nothing but what we did get was this.
So what in the world is that crud that came out of the pipe and landed on the bonnet?? That got washed off pretty toot sweet let me tell you.
So first things first, get the washer bottle out of the car and pour it out. Righto, where's that toolkit ? I must confess i didn't take pictures of the washer bottle
in place but I'm sure you get the idea, here is one of the bottle sitting on the patio.
what is this crap / gunk / yuk in the bottle
So, you can see the washer pumps are different colours and the water pipes in the car also are marked, a green stripe for the.. you guessed it the green pump outlet.
After tipping the contents of the bottle into the toilet bowl I was left with the issue of how do i clean this out properly as I need to run the pumps to clear them
out as well. So, remembering I had the 12Volt adaptor and auxiliary cabling plus the 240v>12VDC convertor I had a plan. After checking the polarity of the connectors
on the car which isn't so easy to do with one pair of hands, i came up with this holder mechanism
Pulling on the washer stalk inside and noting whether the value was +12VDC or -12VDC which would tell me if i had the probes right way round. I'll be honest I didn't get it
right first time so the picture above with the Earth probe in the blue stripe, might be correct or the wrong way round. Check it, it's one or the other.
So half a washer bottle of medium temperature water mixed with some washing up liquid and then hooked up the power and tapped the front pump connectors. To say I
somewhat taken aback is an understatement. Once the pump was tapped a few times with the power (didn't want to burn it out) it was finally clear of the crap in it's inlet
and boom it fired that water out! The rear pump, green connector got the same treatment but because of the shape of the bottle it fired out the water into the housing which
then soaked me! To give you an idea how powerful these things are, here's a pic after i'd run a couple of bottles worth through the pumps
So after all that i hooked everything back up and powered the pumps using the mains adaptor not the car battery and... nothing. So took the pipes off the washer nozzles
and then thought how do I rig this up so I dont wash the garage floor and / or get the car covered in whatever gunk is in the washer feed pipes. Behold I came up with this
Doesn't have to be pretty if it is not staying on the car. So with the metal straw pushed into the rubber car washer hose at windscreen side and the extension tubing running into
a bucket I was free to fire the pumps and clear the tubing which thankfully it did fairly quickly. I did both front washers and the rear washer and then hooked it all back up
properly and all is good. Even my guesstimate for aim of the jets was pretty good with just minor adjustment needed.