I carved out a few hours this weekend to look at the wiper motor assembly, and made a little progress. I was able to unmount the motor from the windshield, link the arm up with the motor housing, attach the clip, and rotate the motor enough to get it close to the mount points. That was where things got difficult. The torque on the motor is enough that I couldn’t rotate it on all three axis to get each of the three bolts to go in cleanly. No amount of cajoling, pushing or pulling would give me the leverage I needed to get it in properly. I figure what they did at the factory was put the motor and arm in as one assembly and then link the arm up to the passenger’s wiper arm. I tried disconnecting the linkage there, but couldn’t disconnect the two arms from each other for love or money. Out of time and patience, I bolted the motor up tightly at one point, put the cowl on, and left it until spring.
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This evening after the sun went down, I cracked the cowl on Peer Pressure to start troubleshooting the wiper issue. I ran the engine up for about ten minutes in the afternoon when I got back from Harbor Freight; in the bag was a battery charger and a test light (along with an oil catchpan and an air fitting for my compressor).
Looking over the connector to the motor, I put the test light on it with the key at ACC and the wiper knob on low. After I found a consistent ground, the hot wires tested good. Puzzling.
I put my tester on it and got power in an acceptable range. More puzzling; it was looking like the motor was bad. I peeked under the cowl to size up the bolt positions, and…
…realized the wiper arm was sitting on the bottom of the inner cowl. Which meant it wasn’t connected at all. I reached in and verified it was completely loose. I cleaned the contacts in the connector with some sandpaper, hooked it back up, got back in the truck and turned the wipers on low. Immediately I heard the whirring of the motor. I’d never checked it with the engine off, so I celebrated with a smack to my own forehead.
Now the problem is getting the motor off the mount so that I can access the arm linkage enough to slide a spare clip on the housing. As I was coaxing the first of three bolts off the ladies called me in to dinner, so I tightened everything back up (the forecast is for 0% rain for the next couple of days), hauled all the tools inside, and called it a night.
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Last night I cleaned off my overloaded workbench, dug out my service manuals, and lined up three spare wiper motors I have in my stash. Right now the wipers in Peer Pressure are defunct, after three years of working without a problem.The stopped working when I was in Chestertown killing time with Brian waiting for the welder, and I got stupid and started fooling with the bulkhead connectors.
My troubleshooting workflow should look something like this:
- Pull the cowl cover off, disconnect the power lead to the motor, and test it for power.
- Check the bulkhead connector for power.
- Test the switch on the dash.
- Pull the motor itself, pull it apart, and see if it’s seized up.
But, because time is limited, I’m a curious guy, and I frequently do things out of order, I decided to pull a few of the motors I have apart to see how they work. I’m starting with one very clean motor and two that have more miles (and grease) on them, but all three are identical. I cleaned the gunk off two of them, cracked the manual, and got started.
Disassembly starts with the switch side, where the arm connects to the housing. Pulling the top off the housing reveals two contacts and a gapped brass plate, which is how the the motor handles delay. Under the plate is a round plastic toothed gear which fits into a worm screw connected directly to the motor itself.
Pulling the cover off the other side of the motor reveals both brushes and the commutator, and inside the housing, the field coils. The clean motor looks almost brand new, while the second one contained the amount of dirt I’d expect from a 30-year-old truck.
I left all the grease in place, closed the motors back up, and decided to wait until I pick up a cheap battery charger to bench test everything with 12 volts. Harbor Freight has one for $20, which fits my budget perfectly, and I may run out and pick it up this weekend.
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Nothing much to report around here. I dug out three spare wiper motors and brought them inside to the bench for winter work. The Scout was out for a brief errand this afternoon before the rain and wind hits. I put the top on tight, rolled up the windows, and battened down the garage, hoping that Sandy passes us by.
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Now that things are getting cold outside, I’ve got to focus on things I can do inside. One thing that’s been bugging me since they stopped working are my wipers, which has proven to be problematic when it rains. I’ve got two spare wiper motors in my stash to work with and a can of electrical cleaner; I need some bearing grease to repack the interior and a clear set of instructions as to how.
1. My first clues about wiring are on the Binder Planet here:
It is a three wire motor with the common being the internal ground.
The wires to and from the Scout switch are:
82 +12 hot
82A +12 after going through breaker, feeds the park switch on the wipers, ( Green wire on Wiper plug) and hot into the switch.
82 B feeds high speed on the wipers, ( Black wire on wiper plug.)
82 C feeds low speed on wipers, (Red wire on wiper plug. )
A 187 goes to washer motor, on this setup, I have here, it`s a green wire, the rest of the wires are black..
The Scout switch in low speed position closes the circuit from 82 A to both 82 B and 82 C wires,
In high speed it closes the circuit from 82 A to 82 B only.
Also,
Check for frozen/binding linkage, especially the wiper pivots. Also running a separate ground from the motor case to the body helps, lots of times the ground path through the motor mounts isn’t very good and gets fixed accidentaly during motor replacement.
2. Key information for inside bench testing is here:
I would clean the inside good with electric parts cleaner. Then bench test it with a battery charger.
Trickle charge 2 amp for low, and 10 amp fast charge for high.
So, if and when I ever get some free time, this will be my next project.
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As detailed in this exhaustive thread, there’s a pretty black bumper on the back of the Scout today. I have a little more work to do to tie up some loose ends, but it’s installed, the license plate is lit, and the spare tire is ready to be mounted.
Our weekend was good, and busy. I spent a bunch of time away from the girls to build and install a new Mountain Lion server for a friend, which went smoother and easier than I’d hoped. Apart from a balky web script that blew up in PHP 5.2, I had everything up and running in a few hours. Yardwork around the house got caught up on, so it looks less like we abandoned the place and more like we just forgot about things (the back lawn hadn’t been completely mowed in about a month). I ran a bunch of errands with Finn as my copilot and got caught up on a pile of small things around the house; going into the fall things are going to get busy around here so I’m trying to prepare as best I can.
My batch of Surly Cynic is in the keg and it’s delicious. It needs a final day or two of carbonation, but that hasn’t stopped me from drinking it. I should also have an IPA kit in hand by Wednesday. Over the vacation, I set up a strong brewing table in the basement next to the kegerator so that I can ferment and transfer beer without moving it bringing it upstairs, and have a place to keep all the brewing gear. Eventually I’m going to move some lumber out of the basement (and possibly the table saw too) and into the garage, after that gets reorganized for the seventeenth time. What the garage really needs is a set of custom-built shelves, but I don’t know if that’s in the cards until wintertime.
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It’s mounted!
I bought six stainless bolts for mounting clips to hide the license plate wire, which I hope to put in sometime in the next day or so. Before I mounted it I drilled and tapped four holes on the backside of the main bumper, and there’s enough standoff to make installation easy.
The mirror mount got painted and reinstalled.
I also put the soft top bows back together as much as possible, but I need some 1.5″ stainless bolts to connect wider sections of the bracketry (I’m using nylon lockwashers this time, so I need a longer bolt to snug the threads). Now that it’s getting cooler I’m going to pull the bikini top, wash it, and store it for the winter. My hunt for stronger snaps is still underway; I’d like to get the door surrounds fixed before it really gets cold.
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