wipers, relay or not?

Hmm, you're right... that does have me thinking now.

To answer your question.  The wires connecting to the motor are visible.  That's how I was able to by-pass the controls in the connector block in the first place.  Now that I have cut the motor wires and joined them directly to my new circuit there is no longer any power going in or out of the connector block.  Only the park switch is being used.

Looked at the park switch again.  When the intermittient realy is stopping the wipers after a timed wipe the wipers don't actually stop moving at the same time that the switch breaks the circuit.  The park switch is telling the relay they have reached the parked position and then the wipers continue to run and are just beginning to start the next wipe when the intermittient relay cuts the power. 

In other words, the intermittient relay is being stopped by a pulse from the park switch rather than the park switch either making or breaking the circuit. 

Alright, decided to remove the motor from the car and open it up so I could properly understand what was going on.

It is a LUCAS motor even though it's not a UK car... although that's not surprising as we did make things in this country and export them once upon a time...

The switch pulses from a gear with a lump on the back of it.  So it's not a CAM exactly.. but similar principal.

Here is the diagram of the connector.  There was no need for me to cut the wires... but I was trying to do this quickly... not always the best way...

The news is that the park switch has more than one state! 

So now we know the motor is able to indicate when it is parked AND when it isn't parked, does that help with sorting out a relay? 

I think ideally... a relay installed to control this would also only work once the wiper stalk is moved to the off position.

But maybe we're just going round in circles here and I should just go back to the opening question of whether or not I need a relay at all?  Perhaps I could get the parking function to be integral to the motor?  That might cause a problem with intermittient... but possibly a route worth considering.

Figure out which connection is connected to the park constant when the motor is anywhere but parked.  Connect that terminal to the low speed wire along with the low speed signal wire and the intermittent wire.  Wipers off and the park switch will make them run until they park.

Connect power to the park constant wire.

Kevin, this motor came from a different vehicle.  The park wiring is what keeps the motor from stopping mid stride.  I was having trouble trying to get both speeds to park, then I realized that if you park only the low speed wire, all will be fine. 

It almost works. 

Problem is that the intermittient relay liked a negative trigger to make it operate.  If I have the intermittent relay plugged into the fuse box the wipers will run all the time even when the stalk is switched to 'off' - the power is comming from the 'park switch constant', through 'park on' where I have connected pin '53s' of the intermittent relay.  Before, when the intermittent relay was connected to 'park off' and that was a grounded pin (when the wipers were in the middle of a wipe) then that would signal to the relay to run the wipers until that ground signal stopped (i.e. until the wipers were parked)  Now with the park switch being live instead... I have a problem.

On the up side... if I didn't want to bother with the intermittient function then I could leave the relay unplugged and the wipers will now auto-park if the stalk is moved to 'off' mid-wipe... 

So the wipers are working now... but not if I want intermittent as well... and that was sort-of the purpose of the exercise!

This is a diagram of the intermittent relay

As noted earlier, 53S is connected to 'Park On'

Other pins are as follows:

- 31: earth

- 15: power into stalk = also power into relay

- 53S: to 'park on' at the motor

- 53M: goes to stalk, is connected to 'normal speed' on wiper motor when stalk is either off or on postion 1

- I: Position 1 on stalk

- T: Connected to stalk - think it's connected to the 'dip' switch for spraying washer water and wiping - that has worked ok when the relay was working