Wipers are on the cowl...how???

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Righty Tighty

Righty Tighty

Blame it on the dog
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I recently rebuilt the 318 in my Scamp, and some new wiring went along with it. Prior to the rebuild, my wipers didn’t work. I replaced the engine harness and AC/heater harness, but nothing new went to the wiper motor.

I connected the battery and broke in the engine, then noticed my wipers had moved position from their starting position on the windshield, to several degrees below that position down onto the cowl. The good news is, now my wipers work! The bad news? How did they get there and how do I reset their position? And why do they work now, even though I didn’t do anything to the wiper motor circuit?

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pull the wiper arms off and move them up to where they are supposed to be. they are on a splined shaft. They just completed the cycle down now, now that they work.
 
Thanks, that’s kinda what I was thinking to do.
I have a theory as to how they got like that. I think the car was a flip when I bought it. I suspect the owner didn’t want to bother with fixing the wipers, and when he did the 2nd rate paint job it now has, he removed the wipers. When he replaced them, he installed them a couple splines off. Does that hold water?
 
IIRC there's a spot between each run position that will de-energize the wipers, maybe the switch was sitting off like that...??? Other than that, maybe you fixed a short when you were redoing the wiring...??? Your theory is a good one about the current position of the wipers ~ highly possible.
 
I would remove the wiper arms and run the wipers for a few minutes, run the switch through its positions.

Then when the switch is off install the wiper arms, and run a cycle or two to see where they will land with the load of the wipers installed. (Keep windshield damp spray bottle of water, Windex etc)

Adjust as needed, go find some rain and enjoy.

Keep in mind that you might have an intermitnant issue that you "fixed" by bumping a wire or connector, or the wiper motor itself.
 
Dana67Dart said:
Keep in mind that you might have an intermitnant issue that you "fixed" by bumping a wire or connector, or the wiper motor itself.
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That occurred to me as well. It's been my experience that things don't magically "fix" themselves by doing nothing to them, and there certainly was a lot of jostling of the wires and the motor definitely got bumped a time or two. Either way, new wires and possibly a motor refresh are on the list. These wires are not in great shape.
 
The wiper motor has a "park position " setting in it. remove the wipers, cycle the motor again if you want to ,turn it off where the shafts rest is where you re align the wiper arms.
 
Remove wiper arms, energize motor then turn off. Once they have parked you can put the arms back on in the correct location.
 
Murray said:
I'm going to drive my car over to your place. Maybe some of that "magic" will fix my car too.
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Sounds good! Just leave the keys and notarized title. Oh, and don’t call me...I’ll call you!

Lord Sparky said:
Use the correct wiper tool to get them off.
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Thanks, I was wondering about that. Was hoping I wouldn’t be stuck prying away with a flathead. I’ll do a google search for the tool.
 
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