88 5th window wiper diag help

[8v-of-fury]

okay, so they stopped working.. i don't drive the car often or even remotely regularly. Things will fail i get it. However they would work intermittently, and hitting the motor seemed to work in March (last time I touched the car). But then they died completely. Thought it was the motor based on that. But alas it isn't. And why is the electrical for it so complicated? Haha.

Testing with a meter;

4 pin connector at motor disconnected
- red 12v with high speed selected
- green w yellow 12v at any spot in the intermittent selection
- dark blue 12v with ignition or acc on
- brown 12v with all intermittent spots and low speed

However if you plug in the connector, all pins are 12v with the ignition on. From my readings the ground is switched. Does this happen in the green box under the dash? At no point does any of the wires ever read continuity to ground.

What I did find though, was of the two wires that go in to motor, only one was given 12v and the other was 12v just because of the circuit.. so I removed the other side of the motor from the connector and grounded it. With that.. all intermittent timing is proper, low speed works and they will park from any spot if you turn the switch off. However high speed doesn't work. Not sure how the circuits go for that. The top jumper is just to assure full battery voltage to the switched power from the battery. To rule out voltage loss being an issue from those wire nuts I didnt install haha.

It will work this way with or without that plastic jumper box that installs over the 4pin connector. What is that anyway?

 

[8v-of-fury]

please help, can't drive her far for fear of being caught in a rain storm!

 

[Sub03]

I totally agree, unnecessarry complicated control circuit for delay wipers.
What's the deal with the reverse to park position?

Anyways, I have a delay switch, control unit and motor from a -78. I'm thinkin of installing it in my -77 Aspen to get intermittent wipers.
Found this some time ago. Heavy reading, but might be of some help:

Chrysler Intermittent (Delay) Wiper Fix

 

[Mikes5thAve]

Any problem I've ever had was bad ground. The only thing that grounds the motor is one flat metal strip at one of the mounting nuts and cleaning it on my 88 only fixed it temporarily. So ran a new wire from a nearby spot to one of the screws and it's worked ever since.

 

[8v-of-fury]

Well what i find weird is, I have battery voltage at both connections to the motor when the ignition is on, so how does this system work exactly?

I assume the ground for the motor bolt is inside the car under the dash then?? Can I add one to the exterior of the motor to get the same result??

If the motor reverses to park, how does me having one motor connection off and grounded even make the system work then?

 

[8v-of-fury]

 

[Mikes5thAve]

If you look at the motor where it bolts to the fire wall one of the nuts has a flat piece of metal behind it. That's what grounds it.

It's easy enough to test if it's the ground. With the ignition on and wipers on when it stops working take a jumper cable and clamp one end on the negative battery terminal and scrape the other end into the metal part of the wiper motor and see if it starts working. Really you can do that with any piece of wire from the engine or anything metal to the motor but it will be more tempermental if the wire isn't touching clean bare metal at each end.

 

[8v-of-fury]

Well low and behold.. grounding the body of an electrical part to the body of the car is a piss poor way to ground something..

Yup, hooked everything up as normal. Turned on ignition and the wipers. No action. Grounded the body with a jumper cable directly to the battery.

WIPE WIPE WIPE!

Thanks for your suggestion Mike!

 

[8v-of-fury]

I never got the ground wire fully installed for a fix yet, as all my "electrical" tools are at work. However I did get some Nu-Finish on the HORRIBLY faded paint on the hood/trunk. I know the car has had some body work done in the past, and these two spots are either original shit paint? or shitty after market paint.. The hood and trunk and one of the head light surrounds were so faded it wasn't funny. Weird thing is, it has been parked under a car-port its entire life. And the back half was the half exposed if anything was exposed..

 

[Camtron]

Whoa dig that spare tire rack. I haven’t seen many M body’s where the hood, truck and roof didn’t fade. Paint on the quarters and doors always seems solid enough.

 

[Mikes5thAve]

You're welcome Glad to hear the ground fixed it! Hopefully that's all it was. Like I said on mine I added a small wire from one of the philips screws you can see on the motor back to whatever the most convenient bolt on the body is. I just looked and it actually runs to a nut on the alternator. It was a roadside repair and I guess at the time that was the easiest one to get off with a pair of pliers.

For the paint if your polishing rags have color on them it's been repainted. Original paint was clearcoat which won't bleed the colour off and usually doesn't take much to get shiny. Your pinstripe isn't in the proper spot so it's probably been repainted at some point.

I have the pimp wheel on the back of mine too. It came off a friends car originally. Yours is one of my favorite colours on them.

 

[8v-of-fury]

I definitely do not like an M body in any other colour. This is the most classy of Chrysler colours.

I wonder though, wouldn't a repaint have a clear coat applied over the top of it? Granted, my rags did have colour on them.. so .. I mean I know for a fact the car has been in for body work more than once over the years.

 

[SonOfaTomP]

my car is the same color as well. sometimes i wish it was a bit brighter. looks black to brown in the wrong light

 

[kkritsilas]

It depends on if it actually had a clear coat. If it was factory without a clear coat, most body shops that work on it will repaint without a clear coat. I think they came both ways in those years.

Your rag having colour on it seems to indicate no clear coat, unless you have had clear coat failure, which would be obvious and visible.

 

[Mikes5thAve]

By the mid 80s clear coat was standard on them. If they used it for repaint depended on how much someone wanted to spend.