Wipers gone crazy??

K

KickerDRB

New member
Ok here is a good one. Tucked into a cove last night. Sleeping soundly and about 2:30am the starboard windshield wiper starts running. I wack my head and reach around to the switch. Indicator lights on,switch is off. Work the switch a few times, wipers still humming. Grab a headlamp, pull off the console cover to the "home for wayward wiring", find starboard wiper switch and start ripping out wires. Wipers still humming. Wack head again and crawl out of the hole, grab pocket knife to amputate wiper wires, wipers shut off. Hook up wires in the morning, everything works, now wipers will not park.
What in the world is going on?
Thanks,
Dave
 
Dual window swipes have a complete mind of their own usually unaffected by input from the skipper.

Mine would not shut off until I turned on every DC thing in my boat. That put a big enough load on the system to shut down the errant swipes.

Good luck.

Splashed my boat today,1st time this season...yeeehaaa.
 
If you were snoring, they may have had audio input overload. It has happened before with delicate electronic insterments :wink:

I can help with the snoring --- not so much with the wiring 8)

This rates right up there with starcraft tom's wild remote control spot light.

Harvey
SleepyC :moon
 
KickerDRB":3ugg3zwp said:
Ok here is a good one. Tucked into a cove last night. Sleeping soundly and about 2:30am the starboard windshield wiper starts running. I wack my head and reach around to the switch. Indicator lights on,switch is off. Work the switch a few times, wipers still humming. Grab a headlamp, pull off the console cover to the "home for wayward wiring", find starboard wiper switch and start ripping out wires. Wipers still humming. Wack head again and crawl out of the hole, grab pocket knife to amputate wiper wires, wipers shut off. Hook up wires in the morning, everything works, now wipers will not park.
What in the world is going on?
Thanks,
Dave
Click to expand...

Dave-

I assume you got the wires hooked up right, right? (Of course!)

So here's what could be happening:

1. The wiper motors are negatively grounded and have two other wires, both positive.

2. One positive wire runs through the switch and turns the wipers on and off.

3. The second positive wire is always hot, and parks the wiper motor and blade as he same spot when the switch above (2) is turned off. The current goes into an inteernal switch built onto the armature shaft. A cam turns on the shaft and operates the switch nearby. The flat spot on the cam turns the switch off, stopping the armature and blade in the same place every time.

What all this means is one of two things:

1. The second positive wire that parks the wiper is not getting power into the parking switch, so no parking is taking place. This could be caused by a faulty wiring repair or could be caused by a broken fuse if the parking circuit is fused separately from the other manual switch.

2. The other possibility may be that the internal parking switch was damaged in the wiper melee/fracas. The motor case would have to be opened up to determine if this were the case.

If both wipers are not parking, it's probably just a power supply issue with the parking circuit.

Hope this helps! :lol:

Joe. :teeth :thup
 
Thanks everyone! The humor and advice is always appreciated. I will check the wiring. I wonder if the "park hot wire" internal connection is corroded. I will take a peak in the motor housing. If I can get the wiper off without using a sawzall. Now those are some entertaining threads. I will post some results when I tackle this one. Looks like the "have to do list" just got longer, and the "want to do list" is falling behind. Like the battery moving thread.
Thanks again!
Regards,
Dave
 
Several of us have had and continue to have similar problems -- but not in the middle of the night!!! Geez. Each of my three wipers has it's own "personality", I attribute it to a poor design by AFI in the parking circuit as Joe described.

My port wiper now NEVER parks (it used to years ago), so I time it and shut off with the additional switch for each wiper I added in series with the breaker switch. The center wiper, which I added only a few years ago, still works perfectly (knock on wood). The starboard wiper works correctly for minutes of operation at a time. But if I leave it on to continuously wipe the window for more than about 5-10 minutes, it won't shut off, won't park. I believe the internal logic circuit heats up causing it to disregard that the wiper circuit's voltage has been turned off.

So far I've lived with it, but my plan, at least for the starboard wiper, is to find the always hot line and route it through the breaker switch so that it can be extinguished for sure without cutting the wire. Then someday replace it with a newer model, hoping the factory has redesigned their circuitry.

Loved your writeup.
 
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