Wiper motor rebuild

[Artificer]

First I'd like to say hello to everyone on the forum, this is my first post. I look forward to a lot of great information and fun. I just took custodianship of a (mostly) 1965 IIA from my brother, who just got transferred to Miami. He bought it about 3 years ago as an Ebay special (it was already that color, I swear) and did about $11,000 worth of work on it, starting with replacing the frame and going up from there. It's a great little truck, and starts on the first crank every time.

The sad part of the story is that neither I nor my brother are electricians. Frankly I'm happy when I don't zap myself on the electric fence. The day my brother and I finished replacing the wiring harness I guess we got some wires crossed. There was a funky smell and now neither of the wiper motors work.

So here's the question: does anyone know someone in eastern PA who could do a rebuild? As I said before I seem to have a rare mental illness that only surfaces when I am staring at a wiring diagram, so I am fairly certain that I would be incapable of doing this without help. Yes, I have seen the various step-by-steps online, and they were all greek to me.

I look forward to all the berating and brow beating, and hope someone out there can help.

[amcordo]

Congrats and welcome to the board! Please post more pics of your truck; I've got to see it closer!!! If I painted mine pink the ladies would ride in it everyday - don't be ashamed - you've got a helluvah machine!

[Artificer]

Thanks, but you should see it now. It's got the spare on the bonnet and the Fairey overdrive is in.

[LaneRover]

Did the electrical smoke come out of the wipers or somewhere else?

[Nium]

I am an electrician

Welcome aboard!

Have you tried to hot wire the wiper motors to verify they are smoked? I did read that electrical is greek to ya well that should be ok then cause symbols like the one used for resistance is the ohm which is greek . What exactly are you looking for help with, hands on rewiring of a suspected miswire? Did ya want a recommendation of a shop to rebuild the wiper motors? Or ya not really sure what's not working just that the wipers don't go.

If you did need a hand I could try and coordinate with you to go over stuff if you'd like.

Pink Panther pink?

[Jeff Aronson]

First off, is the problem only in the wipers or do other electrical components also not work? The wipers require power from the ignition switch. Turn the switch on. Do the oil lamp and generator light come on? If not, then the problem may be in the ignition switch.

If the warning lights come on, try the directionals. Do they work? If not, then check the fuses. This is easy because Series II-A's of your vintage have only two fuses. Pull out each fuse from the box against the bulkhead and see if one is blown.

I don't know what you mean by "rewiring" and exactly what you did. When did the electrical burning smell appear? Was the car running or just when you tried to use the wipers?

If this car has the dual wiper motors, it's unlkely that both would be "fried" at the same time as they operate separately, and only when turned on individually.

So this will require some diagnostics on your part, and it really can be done by a guy, like me, who used to blow household circuits when hooking up electric trains.

To start, can you provide us with a list of what you mean by "rewiring," and what electronic components work now and which do not?

Jeff

[Nium]

The day my brother and I finished replacing the wiring harness I guess we got some wires crossed. There was a funky smell and now neither of the wiper motors work.

Jeff Aronson wrote

I don't know what you mean by "rewiring" and exactly what you did.

Jeff it would seem Artificer very clearly stated what he meant. He and his brother replaced the wiring harness. In fact Artificer never used the term "rewiring".

[Jeff Aronson]

Walker, you're right, I used the terms "rewiring.". I was trying to find out which harness - front headlamps, dash to engine, rear lamps - was replaced, or whether all of them were replaced.

I once came across a Series Rover failed on the side of the road when smoke filled the interior. When we explored the problem further, we found a problem only affected the ignition portion of the harness. Bypassing it let the car run again and get home safely with the lights and accessories working.

In my Rover, smoke once filled the interior on a snowy night away from home. I thought everything was lost but it was only a meltdown of my front harness which required replacement in a snowbank. I got help over the phone from Rovers North diagnosing the problem and with the repair, and it turns out that the repair helped prevent other problems.

I once thought I toasted all the wiring on my TR-7 when I suffered from an alternator short that poured smoke throughout the engine and melted all the wiring connectors in the engine compartment. But more experienced British car mechanics walked me through the repair process, which taught me that all was repairable, and rather quickly, when I understood more about how the wiring sections connected together and worked together. In that case, only one portion of the harness was ruined and the other electrical systems in the car were unaffected.

Like you, I'm still looking to help understand the failure of the wipers to work. If he still has the original dual wipers, the motors are each grounded separately to the bulkhead and receive power through the ignition switch. Perhaps this is only a wire that came off the pin in the rear of the ignition switch, or melted in back and needs diagnosis [to find out why it's getting more amperage?] and repair?

The wipers are simple electric motors. Perhaps an auto starter shop should be able to clean them out and replace any brushes?

Just ideas, and I hope they help.

Jeff

Jeff

[Artificer]

Ok, one at a time.

Did the electrical smoke come out of the wipers or somewhere else?

Actually, there was no smoke that I could see, just that burning plastic funk.

I don't know what you mean by "rewiring" and exactly what you did. When did the electrical burning smell appear? Was the car running or just when you tried to use the wipers?

If this car has the dual wiper motors, it's unlkely that both would be "fried" at the same time as they operate separately, and only when turned on individually.

What I mean by rewiring is that we literally replaced the entire wiring harness from headlight to taillight... TWICE. We did it wrong the first time, had to yank it and redo it. The smell first appeared after we had finished rewiring the second, supposedly correct time, had hooked up the battery, started the rover, and started flipping things on and off to see if they worked. Everything worked except for the wipers, and using occams razor we determined the smell must be coming from the wipers.

I should have mentioned this in my first post, but I guess it slipped my mind: The RH wiper motor has not worked since I or my brother have owned the rover. In other words I didn't break it, stop trying to pin it on me!

I hope this clarifies things.

[Tsmith]

It might be helpful to wire the wiper motors directly to a 12V source and see if it is an electrical problem. I took mine apart, cleaned out the fifty year-old grease that had turned into a material resembling granite, reassembled with fresh grease and they both worked. I cleaned the surface that the brushes rub against, but the brushes themselves were still in good shape.

Tom Smith
'60 SII

[scott]

It might be helpful to wire the wiper motors directly to a 12V source and see if it is an electrical problem. I took mine apart, cleaned out the fifty year-old grease that had turned into a material resembling granite, reassembled with fresh grease and they both worked. I cleaned the surface that the brushes rub against, but the brushes themselves were still in good shape.

Tom Smith
'60 SII

good point. jump it directly and see if it works. i once switch on one of mine and poof! the uninsulated wire going from the wiper to the windscreen glowed red and melted away. weird though the wiper still works even without that wire. i've since installed a whole new wire harness of the later type that has just one wiper lead (i don't sit on the psgr side anyway so i'm not bothered by rain on that screen). it has two wires for the wiper a green and a green with a black tracer. with the green powering the motor and the one with the black tracer hooked to were that melted away ground was or not hooked the wiper still wipes