88BLKTransAmGTA

1988 GTA 350
My wiper motor and windshield washer have quit working. I put in a new multi switch and didn't fix it. Replaced the entire wiper unit (motor and circuit board) with a reman and still noting. Got to be ground right? Where is the ground location?

72buickgs

Did u test the motor before installing?

sofakingdom

iTrader: (1)

Ground is a copper strap around one of the 3 rubber insulators holding it to the firewall. Depends on the rigidity of the rubber. Incredibly beyond STOOOOOOOOPID.

Put in a short piece of wire between the motor casing and one of the existing ground screws on the firewall.

88BLKTransAmGTA

yeah, both my motors work I just had a crack in the housing one so I replaced it.

72buickgs

With wiper motor installed, ground the motor to the firewall with a patch cord. Turn on the wiper & using a meter check power at the connectors. No power then wiring break or bad switch. Is fuse good? Check it.

vorteciroc

There is no harm extending the Ground Wire down to the Fire-Wall Ground location down by the rear of the Engine.

While this should not be necessary, I personally do this for all of these cars that I come across.

Grounding is the most important part of the Cars electrical system.

All DC Electricity comes from the Negative Terminal of the Battery.
Remember in DC, Electricity flows in one direction, Negative to Positive.
Electricity (ELECTRONS), Negatively charged particles will flow towards the Positive charge.

OrangeBird

iTrader: (1)

I have had many "discussions" in my life with people supposedly "electrically savvy" who simply will not accept this fact. I try explaining it with the Vacuum Tube operating principle ;

The cathode is biased negatively. The anode (plate) is biased positively. Electrons (negatively charged particles) leave the cathode and are collected by the plate*, electron flow from an area of excess electrons to an area electron deficient.

* as varied by the increasingly negatively charged grid.

Ya wanna really see some blowback, , , , try telling people about how since the earth is negatively charged, and the cloud is positively charged, in which direction is the power flow of a lightning bolt?

88BLKTransAmGTA

Back to the wiper issue. Had to take a break for a while.
- Wipers do not work
-washer sprayer not working

ground is good.
new motor
new circuit board
11.9 at green and bottom pink
0.04 at the 2 end wires of 3 on the motor.
power does not fluctuate from acc key on with multi switch on or off.any ideas?

88BLKTransAmGTA

If there is power to the motor from the column switch and my blinkers work does that mean the switch is still good?

91banditt2

iTrader: (1)

The wiper motor and turn signals are supplied power from two separate fuses.
I would check continuity between these two, with the wipers switched on do you have voltage at the purple wire, with the washer switched on do you have voltage at the grey wire?

88BLKTransAmGTA

grey is a yes
purple is a no👎

NoEmissions84TA

iTrader: (1)

Then you learned electron flow (as I did in technical school) and that the current flows AGAINST the arrow. Confused the hell out of me in college because they taught conventional flow (WITH the arrow).

NoEmissions84TA

iTrader: (1)

You must have a leak and your blinker fluid is now low.
Time to change your blinker fluid.

sofakingdom

iTrader: (1)

An interesting footnote to the "conventional current" conundrum:

A certain American, in the latter half of the 18th century, was one of the world's foremost scientific minds, on the cutting edge of discovery regarding electricity, which of course at that time was a completely novel and exciting phenomenon. This man probably advanced the field of understanding of this invisible yet powerful phenomenon as much as anyone did up until Michael Faraday. He was later the American ambassador to France during an important period in the early history of our country.

One of the things that was already known by that time was that there were 2 kinds of electric charge that could easily be accumulated. One was obtained by rubbing a rubber rod (!!) with fur (!!!); the other, by rubbing a glass rod with silk. It had been determined that these were actually the same thing, just, equal and opposite: if you brought things charged by either type together with objects charged by the same, they repelled each other; but if you brought ones from each type near the other type, they attracted. It was quite strange. A professor at Leiden University (I have a daughter who lives in Leiden, no more than a mile from the uni) investigated what we today would call a capacitor, but then was called a Leyden (archaic spelling of the town now known as Leiden, which also incidentally was where the Pilgrims who landed at Plymouth Rock stayed for several years between fleeing England and crossing the Atlantic) jar. Since then, a substantial n umber of similar devices have been found in Baghdad, dating from 1500 - 2000 yrs ago, although no one quite knows today what those people knew about them or did with them. However all that may be, the man in Leiden (Leyden) found, among other things about it, that ALOT of charge could be stored in his device, enough to cause serious injury in fact. Anyway...

This American performed a particular experiment whose nature and purpose have become garbled in folklore, that involved a Leyden jar. He suspected that lightning was an electrical disturbance, having noticed that a lightning bolt looked alot like a YYYUUUUUJJJJJJE version of the spark one could get from a really charged-up Leyden jar. What he did was to fly a kite in a thunderstorm, connected to a Leyden jar, to collect some of the mysterious essence of lightning, so that he could investigate it more fully later on. He was able to determine that the substance collected from the lightning matched that which accumulated on the glass rod rubbed with silk. Since it seemed to him that this demonstrated that the kind of charge in lightning represented an overabundance or accumulation of something, he called this kind or polarity of charge "positive". So in one stroke, this world-class scientist positively established (sorry) the nature of lightning as electrical, and assigned polarity to it.

No doubt you've already figured out who this American of whom I speak was. None other than Benjamin Franklin of course. Also the inventor of a new musical instrument he called the "glass harmonica", whose ethereal sound so intrigued Mozart that he wrote a concerto and some other pieces for Glass Harmonica and Orchestra. As an example


Mozart wasn't the only one who wrote for it but he was certainly the most prominent. It must have sounded as otherwordly to people in the 1760s as the theremin did to people in the 1920s and 30s.

Anyway, as it turned out, Ben got it backwards. But his nomenclature for "positive" and "negative" stuck, to this day. The clouds lose electrons which have "negative" charge, and thereby become "positively" charged. And that's why conventional current flows from "positive" to "negative", while in actual physical reality, it's the "negatively" charged electrons that are doing the flowing.

NoEmissions84TA

iTrader: (1)

Sofa, thanks for that.
And what an interesting instrument.

vorteciroc

Note:

Just for clarity...
We have been Only discussing DC Circuits, and NOT Alternating Current.

88BLKTransAmGTA

Alright. I got the steering column apart and replaced the switch. Problem now is wipers only work on high and only go up and down a couple of inches. Anyone know what the issue is?