'97 Outback wipers

[D60]

I'm trying to diagnose a wiper problem on a '97 Outback.

At the moment as soon as I turn on they key the wipers pull down to park and seem locked up. My impression is that the motor can't or doesn't think it's in the park position so it keeps trying.

Turning the wipers on does nothing.

With the key off I can sweep the wipers by hand with relative ease.

With the key on long enough the motor gets really hot to the touch, but it never smoked or melted any wiring.

If I understand the history correctly, at some point the linkage fell off and the owner managed to reattach it. Is it possible he reattached in a way that won't let it fully cycle, thus it thinks it can never reach park?

Or is this just a faulty motor or something else?

The difficulty of accessing the linkage at the motor is apparently legendary, but beyond that there's not much tech online. I expected a dozen YT vids, but no.

 

[D60]

Ok well I figured it out with a bit more thought. I found it was jamming a wiper arm into the plastic cowl as it tried to park, so as an experiment I pulled the wiper arms and then it freely cycled.

I let it park with no arms impeding travel and then reinstalled the arms.

Whoever was last into it mixed up the arms side to side which only magnified the problem because the RH arm has a special clearance bend for the cowl.

I have no idea if the linkage is sound as it reportedly came apart once, but it's working NOW so I'm going to suggest to the owner we don't try to fix what ain't broke.....