I guess I am just not normal. Actually I have known that for years, but I don’t dwell on it too much. Normal is overrated. I don't have many pictures of my cars, except maybe a few that were shot on film and have never been scanned. I'll have to take a look and see what I can find. I will have to take some pics of my convertible when I have time and have it out of the crowded garage. The other cars are buried in my shop. I guess I have lived alone too long, no gf around to snap pictures of me with the cars at shows or Bandimere. No gf to take to car shows and on drives in the mountains. No gf, hey what’s wrong with those potential gfs anyway??? Who wastes potential drives in the mountains with a nice guy in a convertible? Look what we are missing! Only in Colorado. But I digress....
Wiper issues can be a real pain. Problems can come from the wiring, the switch or the motor. There are some major differences between the 2 speed and 3 speed wipers. I was pretty sure the switch on mine was okay, I had taken the dash apart to clean the dimmer for the dash lights and had checked it over while I was there. Keep in mind I have variable wipers. Three speed wipers use the same motor with a different switch. Two speed wipers use a totally different system.
My wipers would run all the time when plugged in so I had just been leaving the connector under the motor unplugged unless it was raining and I was driving- not something I like to do with this car. I checked it out and the park switch on the motor was closed all the time. It should be closed until the mechanism reaches the park position and then it should open, removing power to the motor. I pulled the cover off the motor and everything looked okay. If I opened the park switch on the cover by inserting a piece of paper between the contacts the wipers would turn on and off and the speed would vary as it should. When you turned the wipers off with the switch open, they just stopped where they were. This was actually progress and a good sign.
When you turn the switch off and the park switch is closed it should cause the motor to reverse and through some magic in the motor and linkages the wipers travel further down the windshield and park off the glass. This is when the park switch is supposed to open. One of the first things I had noticed is that the cover had been off before and was put back on with the locating "tab" in what I believed to be the wrong place. With the cover rotated from its proper place, the switch and the internal mechanism that operates it are not aligned correctly. I will attach a picture of what I believe is the correct location; it is at the 9:00 position in the picture. You can see a c-shaped area of the housing and a projection that is part of the cover that fits into the "c". I fooled around with the cams and mechanism inside the cover, and nothing appeared to be broken or damaged.
I cleaned the contacts on the park switch and put the cover back on. I had no idea how to set the cam and the little metal levers, but I assumed they would find their way and all would be good. I assumed wrong. When I turned the wipers on they worked as they should and when I turned them off they parked. But only once, somehow the cam bent the park switch so it was now open all the time. I tweaked it back to where it should be, knowing that a couple of those events would surely break it. I noticed that the passenger side wiper was travelling too far and hitting the stop on the trim, so I pulled that arm off to stop that from happening. I could spend an hour trying to describe the cam and lever mechanism, and I could pull the cover and take a picture if I weren’t afraid I’d have trouble getting it to work and not bend the park switch again! I’ll just say I set the cams/levers to the way they I thought they should be when the wipers were running. I then turned the wiper switch on and then turned on the key so it would not reverse right away. That seemed to get everything back into position and when I turned the wipers off the motor reversed and they parked. Somewhere in this process I had reattached the wiper arm I removed with it rotated to not go down so far when parked. It actually is not going quite far enough, but it is working and I am happy for now.
I think Kim has a bunch of info on the web and even this site about wipers. I just did a search and here is some good info and pics from Kim right here on this site:
http://www.cuda-challenger.com/cc/index.php?topic=75070.0My motor has the guts like the one shown in Kim’s photos. I set it up like in her 2nd photo when I put it together the last time and it worked. In the other photos (the first ones) you can see a lever on the cover close to the park switch. That follows the cam and actuates the levers. It’s a pretty clever design and sure is not simple. It’s interesting that the first photos show a spring in the mechanism and the second set (like mine) has no spring. I wonder which is the more “robust” design?
AARuFAST- I have cool story about a 4-wheeling trip that includes a humorous stop in Bailey Colorado. Maybe I can find where I wrote it up and post it.
Clay
