For a few weeks now I’ve been aware of an issue with my Puma’s windscreen washer. On the passenger side, little of the spray is reaching the windscreen. The driver side is fine.

What could be causing this and was this something I could do myself?

I looked at the online manuals and found, well, nothing.

I found a post that seemed specific to the Puma but, I have to say, was still pretty generic. Still, without images to help, it gave me some ideas of where to look.

I also reached out to Ford and Puma specific UK forums and, well, they just directed me to YouTube videos which were always generic and, at best, for “Fords”, without any of them looking anything like the set-up in the Puma.

What I did know was this it wasn’t motor related, due to both being able to hear it running when I tried the washer, but also the fact that the driver side was working. What I did know was that a single tube delivers the water and it’s then distributed to both jets. The jets on the Puma look like this…

These are a modern type that spray a mist rather than a specific jet. Some people say they can be adjusted, others say otherwise.

I asked my wife to try the washers for me whilst I watched from outside the car and confirmed that it wasn’t the direction of the jet. So, thankfully, that was another thing ruled out.

I also used a toothbrush to give the jet a scrub, in case any debris just inside the nozzle was causing it. It wasn’t.

Next step, up goes the bonnet.

The jets and the pipework are on the underside of the bonnet in the Puma and looks something like this…

The light blue circle shows the washer jet. Just above that you can see the cutout in the bodywork where the pipe comes through.

There are two further bodywork cut-outs – the one on the far left is for the drivers jet and the middle one is where the pipe comes in and divides between the two sides.

The black padding you can see is sound insulation that covers all of this up. The green ring shows 1 of 18 clips that hold the insulation in place. Squeeze each of these clips in turn and pull them out.

The insulation should now come out – just be careful, as some protective foam that wraps around the washer pipes had got stuck to mine. This just needs carefully peeling off.

Here’s the pipe as it goes into the passenger jet…

Looks fine, right? But a closer look revealed that it wasn’t connected properly, between the black and white sections. It was together but not tightly. Pulling them fully apart it looks like this…

Anyway, I pushed them together fully and made sure that grey clip that you can see around the white section was fully engaged and tight.

I closed the bonnet, tried the washer and… bingo… all was not working fantastic. It had even improved the pressure to the drivers side too as well, bizarrely.

What had done this? They used to work fine, and I suspect the service at the dealership a month and a half ago may have been the cause. Why they would have touched this, though, is a mystery. Otherwise, without intervention, I can’t imagine how the pipe would have come loose.

Next step was to reverse all of this by adding the insulation and then the clips.

Now, if I hadn’t found this, the next part would have been to have removed various parts of the pipework and checked for obstructions. It could have been the jet itself, which I believe can be pushed out from the bodywork and replaced.