I have been fighting my 82 firebird for weeks now and I'm at the end of my rope! I have put a new wiper motor on. Check connector under steering column and made a extra ground. The damn things will not come on unless I disassemble everything again and reinstall and it works once and not ever again unless I repeat this process. Please someone help!!!

 

This is probably the problem. Not what you did, I don't mean that; but the root cause, is most likely grounding. Whatever you did may or may not have solved it.

Grounding as the factory installed it, in that system, relies on a little brass strip that crosses over one of the 3 rubber noise isolators that the whole thing is mounted to the firewall with. It depends on the rubber maintaining its hardness. Very stupid of course. Of course, it doesn't. When that happens, the entire motor assy becomes ungrounded.

Connect a piece of wire between one of the case screws of the motor itself - NOT the aluminum blob thing that the mounts attach to - and an existing ground screw on the firewall. The motor proper is the round part that sticks off downward and toward the driver's side. Make sure that both ends of the wire have a good clean metal surface to connect to, and that they DO NOT rely on any plastic or rubber to maintain their tension.

 

I put grounds everywhere and yet nothing. I'm going crazy!!!

 

I had to replace the wiper motor on my '83 last year. You may have gotten a bad one...

 

I have replaced the motor. Got more than enough grounds. My question is can the stalk be bad even though the turn signals still work. I really don't want to attempt the switch if I can possibly help it because that's gonna be a damn job.

 

Unplug the connector from the wiper motor and check the output with a volt meter on the low and high switch positions. The center pin is 12v+, the outter connections are grounds if I remember right...