So, I am trying to diagnose why my wipers will not turn off unless I turn the car off..I have been doing a lot of searching. When i went to take the plug off of the wiper motor, i noticed someone(one of the previous owners) had used a peice of wire to jump these two together. The wire is jumping the red, and yellow wire together, on the 3 wire connector that plugs into the wiper motor furthest to the drivers side. What would be the reason why someone might jump these two wires together?

 

That looks like a diode. But if it is shorted, then yes, those 2 wires are shorted.
A diode is supposed to conduct in only 1 direction. It's there for protection.

 

The "previous owner" who "jumped" those wires was none other than the General himself ........ The General at General Motors , that is

If you look at this handy schematic , you'll see that the "jumper" is in fact a Diode , and it was factory installed per the drawing .

Consider it a "one way jumper" , if you will , but it most certainly IS supposed to be there .

Now if that diode were to become short circuited , in other words instead of failing "open" it failed "shorted" , well I'm not quite sure what that would do to the operation of the circuit since the diagram doesn't show the schematic of the actual wiring/circuit components inside either the motor or the switch themselves , just the interconnecting wiring between the two units .

 

Looking closer I think you are right. I thought it was just a little piece of the rubber still left on some wire. Its pretty charred it seems. They had something wrapped around it but it was so old and worn out I don't know what it was

 

Well I am glad to know it's supposed to be like that lol, I have found a few interesting things done by the previous guy before so I assumed it was just more of his handy work. Thanks

 

Black duct tape. Some later cars (not necessarily thirdgens) had a rubber boot.

 

I thought it looked like duct tape...at first I thought it was electric tape but pretty much all that was left was the strings, so that muat be what it was. Did they really come from the factory with duct tape??? :/

 

Yep. GM used black duct tape around every splice in the car's harness. It's great fun when you go to remove it, the glue turns to super sticky goo that sticks to everything.

 

If you have a meter with the diode check function, with that connector disconnected, measure across those terminals in both directions. It should not read a short (000) in either direction. If so that diode is shorted. It is there to protect the circuit board from the collapsing field of the motor windings that happens when the motor stops.