Wipers move easily by hand vehicle off while clearing ice

[Willygee]

My 16 TCXLT fr wipers move easily by hand (very little resistance )vehicle off, while i was clearing ice. Days of old the wiper transmission would offer to much resistance. After clearing ice i repositioned to there park position,start van and all is well..any harm in this ?

[JackGrimshaw]

That is the recommended procedure per manual for changing wiper blades.Not sure what would happen if ignition key was turned on with wiper arms flipped up  and I would not try it.

[jrm223]

Trust me, nothing special happens if you leave the wipers in the up position, I've done it several times when I still lived in the snowy north (and even occasionally here in the South, ice storms come through sometimes in winter). There's a threshold procedure that runs every time you start the van, y'all may have noticed the wipers move slightly when you start - that's part of the procedure, finding 'bottom'. The procedure will move the passenger side wiper down first, then the driver side. So, if/when you need to remove the wiper arms like below, you need to reinstall them relatively close to the position you pulled them off in, although it doesn't need to be perfectly exact. I will say that next time I need to remove them, I'm going to start with them in the 'up' position where they're easier to work with. BTW, as shown in the pic, our vans use two separate wiper motors, rather than linkages like in the days of old, lol. 

 

This pic is actually the stuff you have to remove from underhood to change out the damn struts, but you can see the two wiper motors on the left side.