Today it is raining in Southern New Jersey, where I live. (We may have a little snow later). So I turned on the rear wiper to the continuous setting. When I got to work, and rotated the wiper stalk to turn off the rear wiper, nothing happened. So the wiper could be stopped only by powering down the car. I am worried about this because the last thing I want is to have the rear wiper operating on a dry day. I will head toward Toyota service when I can, but is there anything I can do in between to stop the wiper from operating? thanks. Todayt
On 3rd gen, you can pry up the plastic housing at the "shoulder" of the wiper arm. This allows the wiper arm to swivel up through about 90 deg, and hold in that position, away from the glass. But there's a fair amount of spring tension still on the arm. A decent bump (as you're driving), and it might smack down again. Maybe a bit of tape on it too, to guard against this?
Use your owners manual for reference. There is a fuse panel panel under dash left knee. With the vehicle powered down, pull the cover off and remove fuse #25 RR WIP 20A. Done.
I suggest removing the whole arm until you can get the switch repaired or replaced. That's easy. After you pull up the small plastic cover as Mendel suggested, the nut that holds the arm on its shaft is very accessible. No danger then that the arm will slam back down on a bump, and it won't look as strange.
Did the inside of the hatch get wet? There was a guy here with this problem after getting his hatch tinted. They must have run excessive water into the motor assembly. After it dried, the ghost wipes stopped.
Jonny, your explanation might be the right one. It was raining heavily here in the morning. The rain had stopped by the time I was ready to go home late in the afternoon. The switch worked, and turned the wiper first to intermittent, and then to off. My Prius seems to have a number of gremlins. The reason may be that I bought my 2010 in August of 2009, so I probably got one of the earlier cars off the assembly line. But I can't be too hard on the car: I have over 60,000 miles and have not had to do anything more serious than replace the tires. Anyway, my problem is solved. Thanks to all of you who offered suggestions. But I am not moving to the Pacific Northwest!
I found this from a search after having the same problem. In my case, a couple days ago, I noticed that the rear wiper turned on by itself while I was driving through hours of torrential rain during a cross-Canada road trip. I ended up stopping, looking at the owner's manual, and pulling the fuse. Good to know that the wiper stalk is probably not the problem. I'll let it dry out for a few more days before testing to see if I can put the fuse back in. I'll also look to see if I can figure out where the hatch might have a sealing or drainage problem. I was also sleeping in the car, and condensation might have run down there the one time I didn't wipe that back window dry in the morning (thinking of the moisture from tint example given).
