265 Headlight washers won't "open"

Discussion in 'Exterior & Bodywork' started by vW3iW6hX, Jan 16, 2022.

  1. The other day was the first time I've driven my 265 at night in a while, and I happened to have no music playing and heard the washer pump "over-running". That was what alerted me to the fact that even non-Xenon cars have headlight washers.

    But when I actually tried to make them fire on purpose, they don't open/extend/whatever you want to call it from the bumper. The pumps are 100% working because from outside the car I can hear that once the windscreen has finished pumping, the left/right pumps then fire off and you can see washer fluid dripping out from behind the bumper. But the caps don't move at all (e.g. like they do in this video ) so they're just spraying "something" behind the bumper that probably isn't supposed to be sprayed with water.

    So....what gives? I found an ebay auction for a replacement part which makes it look like there's no electrical connection and they're supposed to extend purely through the water pressure (https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/293431042231)? Are the caps known for sticking and maybe I just need to free them up so they can move properly again? Or is this going to be a bumper-off job?

    Thanks!
     
  2. Never mind, as usual I've solved my own problem within about 10 minutes of posting it, but just in case anyone finds this through Google...

    Yes, they're un-powered, but "powered" by water pressure. Yes, they can get stuck, probably with years of general "road shit buildup". I managed to lever up a tiny bit of the corner and worked some dental floss around to "split" the cap off the bumper and then really gently levering upwards on each one while the pump was running I managed to free them up. Then while they were extended I quickly wiped over the bumper where the two plastic parts meet to try and clean up some of the gunk and they're still firing OK now.

    You can actually see in the video above that there's a black ring on the bumper when the washers extend so I guess it does just get gunked up and it's a pain to clean because there's no way you can just extend the washers on their own since they need the pump to be running to create pressure.
     

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