Windshield wipers have failed to work for long periods or have to play with switch to work right. took car in years ago while under warranty to fix and resolved problem for a few years but is now reoccurring. also drivers side door window switch intermittenly works. i dont know if this is connected to wiper switch but have seen recalls on other toyotas that have this problem and had a recall but none for fj. specifics turn on car, turn on slector switch for wipers "slow thru high it dont matter". wipers dont work.
Due to the steep vertical angle of the windshield and the placement of the defroster vent several inches back from the windshield, the windshield cannot be kept clear by the defroster. the airstream from the defroster does not hit the lower 1/3 of the windshield and the left hand driver side and no amount of air even at maximum temperature will keep the windshield from icing over. the wiper blades become encrusted with ice and fail to keep the windshield cleared. in even a modest snowstorm, visibility quickly drops to nearly zero. my wife nearly wrecked the vehicle because of this issue. in addition, due to the large thermal gradient across the windshield caused by this issue, the windshield cracks in a horizontal line extending across nearly the entire windshield at the location of the defroster airstream contact. this phenomenon has happened 2 times! i have talked to my local toyota dealer several times and they are in complete denial about the issue and claim "everything is working as designed". this is a fatal problem as the vehicle cannot be driven in a snowstorm and i would not be the slightest bit surprised if there have been accidents because of it. using fmea (failure mode effects analysis) i would rate the probability of this failure occurring to be a 1 (guaranteed to happen) and effects are catastrophic (loss of operability). *tr