Vauxhall Astra Rear Jet Washer

Question

I have a 5 door Vauxhall Astra [Club Twinport] (07 plate). The rear jet washer is blocked some how. The front jets work nicely (although one was initially blocked but the fine needle tip worked well) and the jet motor works perfectly.

My question is how can I get access to the rear jet washer as it's not really documented. The jet washer is located within the upper rear breaking light bar.

Please see the following pictures;

Picture of the washer (within tail light, to the left)

Close up of the panelling behind the tail light

General picture of the panelling

Any help would be grateful received. Quite the DIY-car newbie!

Answer 1

I just did this last weekend. It is an easy job! The consensus on must of the Vauxhall/Opel forums is not to try and poke anything into the hole, you'll just ram the blockage further inside the nozzle.

Here are the steps...

1. Unclip the "strings" which hold the parcelshelf in place
2. Unscrew the plastic ball joints which those string were clipped to
3. Unclip the trim. Just the left hand one behind the nozzle/brake light. Removing the right hand one isn't required but does let a bit more light in. Start in the middle, get your fingers behind it and give it a sharp tug. Work your way along until all the clips are released. Note that the clips are nice sprung metal ones, so you don't need to worry too much about breaking them... unlike the single-use plastic ones which manufacturers like to use on door cards (I hate those ones!)
4. Once the trim is removed , the nozzle is removed from the inside, but it is clipped in. A torch and a thin flat bladed screwdriver should do the job. As it is clipped in at both sides, the technique I used was to pull gentle on the wire, so that when one side is unclipped, it doesn't pop back in while you try to unclip the other side.
5. When unclipped, the nozzle can pulled off the rubber hose. I had to trim a little off the rubber hose, as it had perished where it was stretched over the nozzle.
6. With the nozzle removed (and preferably with someone to hold the rubber pipe away from the car, activate the rear window washer. On mine, this dislodged a load of gunge in the pipe. If this doesn't result in a high speed jet of water, then you have other problems.. maybe a split pipe, or a faulty one-way valve near the washer bottle pump (behind the front bumper, apparently)
7. Place the removed nozzle in a cup of boiling water with a little washing up liquid to soak. Blow throw it, or use an airline to dislodge the loosened gunk. Alternately, buy a new one on ebay. They are around £5
8. As they say in the Haynes manuals, refit is the reverse of removal!

On mine, it still took a few good squirts to free it up completely, but at least I have a spare now!

Answer 2

Do you have a Haynes manual or similar for the car? They usually describe how to remove the various bits of trim...

Before trying to remove the trim, have you tried cleaning the nozzle out with the tip of a needle or a fine bit of wire?

The bottom photo shows the trim to be in four parts - the window surround (two parts), the lower panel and the lock surround. I suspect they will overlap so you'll have to remove them in the reverse order. Under the small cap to the left of the latch in your photo, will be a screw. There will probably be one in the handhold as well. Removing these should allow the small panel to be removed.

The other two will probably be secured with push-fit clips - which are a pain to remove as you'll almost certainly break some of them! The usual method is to gently prise the edge of the panel off using a flat object (wallpaper scrapers are good...), attempt to ascertain where the clips are, then insert a large flat-bladed screwdriver near the clips and use it to prise them out of their holes - being as careful as possible not to break too many of them... Once you have one or two out you can usually get your fingers behind the panel which makes the rest a bit easier...