Hi all! It's been awhile since I've posted on here, but I've been really busy with work, getting the new car, and of course the Challenger. My original 2 speed wiper motor finally started giving me the parking fits that are all too common. So I headed down to the local Auto Zone and ordered a remanufactured wiper motor for $42. It looked decent, but I was already prepared to get one or two bad ones out of the box since these cores have been recycled probably 3 or 4 time by now. Sure enough, I plug it in and it blows the fuse instantly in the OFF position. Low and high seem to work ok. I ordered another one...... Exact same thing happens. Weird. All told, I went through THREE motors with this exact same issue.
I finally got tired of this (and the Auto Zone employees were doubting they were bad now) and decided to take the $40 warranty gamble and open it up to confirm my suspicions. The armature, brushes, and magnet end looked great, surprisingly. I'd already concluded that the issue was in the park switch circuit; it must be shorted. The gearbox is sealed with 6 rivets. I drilled them out on my original and the new box. The issues were very obvious. The plastic park cam and spring were not even in the new box! On top of that, the parking brush was soldered directly to ground and not the F2 terminal! This was causing a direct short in the OFF position. I also discovered that the threaded end that bolts to the drive link was too big on the new box. I didnt find that out until after my first rebuild attempt.... Hopefully, you guys can learn from my mistake!
The existing components were good quality though. I ended up extending and soldering the brush to the F2 terminal, swapping the old driven gear and park cam parts, and riveting it all back together. Luckily, the motor runs flawlessly! I ran it in with the wipers off for 30 minutes while tapping on the motor to seat the bushings and brushes. All in all, it took maybe 30 minutes to swap everything and redo the park brush wire. Not bad for a $40 part, but not a nice surprise either. I figured I'd give everynone a heads up to avoid the surprise, and to know how to correct it. I don't think anyone else sells these anymore, especially for that price.
