...they just cant make some decisions!
I had a problem this summer with my wipers. Wouldnt go back down. Bottom of stroke then theyd go UP 1/4" when I tried to turn em off. Happened once and messing with the swtich and pulling the fuse and blah blah and they went back down. Fast forward a few weeks and it happened again and they STAYED like that. No dice. I didnt like the faint buzzing I heard in the dash with this condition so I pulled the fuse when I didnt need the wipers.
Well fast forward AGAIN to two weeks ago. I go to put the fuse in cause it might rain that night....turn the key backwards to roll my window up....BAM...they just crept right downward.:spit:
I SWEAR....when they would go haywire would be when I would turn them off and "catch them" at a wrong time...like just as it was starting the upstroke or something. Maybe this is all in my mind but I just know it. Ive been using them some, to test it, and what I do is set the delay really long. So they come to the bottom of the stroke, in interval mode, they stop. I wait a second, then turn them off. They go all the way down.
This has been working flawlessly. I mean just taking a couple compsci courses in college so far tells me, hey, bugs are out there. Maybe that's a bug in the design of whatever makes em tick???? Just doesnt know what to do in that situation. Hey its 21 years old right!?
All I know is theyre workin again and this slight idiosyncrasy doesnt bother me one bit. Im very good at dealing with those. Becomes habit real quick. What I DID have a problem with was my uber-cool hood designed to hide em away being totally useless and them siting there looking goofy as hell :rollin:
Our wiper systems were flaky, that's for sure.
Some wiper tips here:
http://www.coolcats.net/tech/troubleshooting/wipers.html
Generally, if it's a "wiper not parking correctly" issue, then the park fix on that page will solve the problem. But if it's a general delay problem then you have to look at the governor. I've only had to change the governor once, on my old '88 Blue Max V8. Needless to say, there's a pile of delay wiper motors at my disposal, and none of them solved the problem in that case.
It could be worse...imagine if you had to track that down to the wiper switch. ;)
Mine did that exact same problem....I put in a different wiper motor.
Problem solved.
Dunno if that was the cause though..;)
OK, likely that was the park mechanism in the wiper motor. That explains why changing it solved the problem. If you still have the old one you can fix it using the link above, from my site.
I have an old one that I'm going to do this to, and actually document it for the site with photos. One of these days...
Sheesh you'da thunk I'd have gone to the site and looked at your write-up myself LOL. Thanks for the reminder. Good read.
I still have the old one...as you say, one of these days..lol
It could be worse...imagine if you had to track that down to the wiper switch. ;)[/QUOTE]
I have the same problem going on right now. I had a switch that when set on the lowest setting would only let the wipers move about once every 10 min. I replaced it & the wipers still wouldnt go down. I tried 2 diff. governors (NOT FUN!) with no luck. So learn from my dumb ass mistake & start at the wiper motor.
Hell I haven't even used the wipers on my 88 in 2 years......
When I had my old '86 Cougar, I had the buzzing and refusing to park problem. I added a ground wire to the wiper motor, and the problem went away. :burnout:
typical fox body problem
http://www.lincolnsonline.com/tech/00043.html
Did you ground it to the chassis, or back to the battery?
Alright....ya know what!!!??? Why dont you just.........ohhhhh nevermind ;)
Would any of these be the delay type wipers. If so the delay wipers have a BLACK BOX above the fuse box in between the switch and motor. That is the delay control box. That box being toast can also give you the no park and weird wiper actions. Trust me. Mine would never go down and only had high speed and would stop the second you took the switch off high. New delay box and no problem. I had already tried switch and motor.
I also removed the control box and inside was a relay with burnt contacts.
Under a magnifing glass, i was able to clean the contacts.
The problem went away and came back quickly.
I looked at the relay and it was good. I thought to myself what could be putting such a load on this relay to cause the contacts to overheat.
My first thoughts were moving parts.............
I went up to the motor mounting and loosened each bolt a little while the wipper was buzzing.
suddenly the wipers parked when i had just the right combo of bolts loose.
moral of the story.....................
there are bushings up in the cawl panel for the arm linkages. One was oblong looking and so with a little creative shimming , I tightened the motor up and they park.
I think the root cause is mechanical but over time the buzzing is a relay drawing too much current and that kills or corrodes contacts in the rest of the circuit.
Ran a wire from the bolt on the wiper motor that has the ground wire, to the firewall, worked great. :burnout:
What? ;) I don't even know if they still work :hick:
I hate you lol I cant wait til I can shelve MY car like that. Of course, I already HAVE a car that I do that with that definitely needs that far more than the cougar but still! Someday...
Hell if I had a 38 Buick I'd be just taking it out on nice days too. I learned long ago that if you want to keep a car really, really nice you can't daily drive it, even in nice weather. Just find yourself a nice, cheap, MN-12 Cougar to daily drive, if you have room ;)