Audi A4 with sluggish wipers - familiar problem to anybody?

[RigidRaider]

Like it says, the wipers have gone very sluggish although they speed up after a minute or two. This is both wiping and folded away from the windscreen.

'02 plate, 75,000 miles.

Anybody see this before?

 

[^neo^]

Fairly common on the VW/Audi's.

Can be down to 2 things usually:

Either the windscreen is dirty and the blades are dragging across the screen (lift them up and work the wipers, if they go at normal speed then this is the problem. Clean screen with some glass cutting polish from halfrauds and replace blades)

or (more likely)

The spindles (where the wiper arms attach to) are siezing. If you take the wiper arms off, slide the spidles out a little and grease them, it should fix the problem