Thanks for your advice. I was beginning to believe it was impossible to get it out this way, but your reassurance made me work to get it out. I have the used motor I bought installed and everything is working great!
For others trying this, here is what I did to get it out:
First remove the wiper arm by wedging open the base of the arm from the back using a chisel edge or small blade screwdriver. This will expose the wiper motor shaft nut. Remove it , remove the washer hose from the wiper assembly and set the wiper aside. Carefully wedge out the trim panel (between the headlight and the bumper) starting at the radiator side and working outward. Now open the hood and disconnect the air vent tube to the electronic control box (behind the headlight). Wiggle it apart at the joint near the box and rotate the tubing out of the way (No need to completely remove it). Remove the 2-12mm screws holding the hood latch mechanism to the car body and place it on the engine (leave cable connected). All the headlight screws are now exposed. Remove the three 10 mm screws holding the headlight on (2 screws on the outboard side top/bottom and one on the inboard side bottom) and pull the headlight and turn signal out from the front of the car and let them hang from their wires. Note (for reassembly later) that the spring from the turn signal assemble fits into a notch on the back of the headlamp. Disconnect the wiper motor connector (depress the wire clip on the wide side of the connector and pull the plastic connector pieces apart). For a little extra wiggle room, remove the top screw hold the A/C evaporator canister to the car body (located a few inches behind the wiper motor. Now I removed a bunch of screw holding the black plastic grill frame to the car body to obtain more access room:
- Remove the 2-10mm screws on the outboard end of the grill frame.
- Remove 2-10mm screws along the bottom the grill frame using an open end wrench. One is located a couple inches to the right of the wiper motor screws, the other is at the middle of the grill. These screws are long, but they will come out in this confined space.
Now remove the 2 screws holding the wiper motor in place. To get the motor out, I had to pry the grill frame toward the front of the car, while pulling up on the conduit/harness that holds the wires going into the bottom of the electronic control box (this is the box that we removed the air vent tube from earlier). I had to use a pry bar to get the conduit above the bottom lip of the grill (where it can rest for now). Now one should be able to wiggle and twist the motor around to get it back next to the engine and eventually out of the car. This takes a while and requires much swearing, pushing, pulling, prying, etc. I'm not sure how I did it, but with determination you can get it out. Reverse this procedure to put the new one in.
