The 'E' Type Forum

OK, I am coming up to wiring up my wiper motor but the problem is that apart from the red wire, all the the others are so bleached with age that the colour has gone and they are all now a greyish white... How can I find out which wire is which without having to remove the motor from the car...? Any advice gratefully received!

Thanks

Myles

There are some articles in the Forum KB on the motor:

S1 Wiper motor operation guide: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/849 ... hnical.pdf

and: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/849 ... HD%204.pdf

Hmmmm...guessing you have the rectangular motor. Simple answer to your question is....with difficulty. I think XKs unlimited will sell you a new set of the wires but you will have to disassemble the motor to replace the old with new. I have done it. Takes patience.

In theory it might be possible to identify the wires by careful determination of the resistance between the various wires. Trouble is I have no list of resistances and of course winding tolerances and the low expected resistances may make this difficult to repeat between motors. If you want I can measure mine?

Ultimately you might have to bite the bullet and remove the housing and armature from the car and see about changing the wires. Bet the bits in the casing will not be bleached.

Good luck.

No
It can be done as I have the same issue
See my post in technical posted by spark and the pics from just a couple of weeks ago 11 Feb called wiper motor wiring and bench testing
You will need a test meter as the coil resistances are different so can be identified also a document is attached to a post showing the detail
Will work out how I did it again
Sorry bit vague but I don't know ho to link posts

Here you go viewtopic.php?t=8456

cactusman wrote:...Ultimately you might have to bite the bullet and remove the housing and armature from the car and see about changing the wires. Bet the bits in the casing will not be bleached.

Good luck.

Correct, this is what I experienced lately.
Seize this opportunity to clean the rotor, oil and grease, and check the cables for wear potentially using some heatshrink sheating.

As Ralph says, take the opportunity to clean the motor and replace the brushes if worn. Check the wires and replace or reinsulate as needed. Once the motor is open it is easy to identify each wire with reference to the wiper motor operation guide...link in this thread

.As I said it is possible to work out which wire is which using resistance measurement. However with the low resistances involved you will need a good quality meter able to accurately measure low resistances with sufficient resolution to be able to differentiate between say 1.0 ohms And 1.5 ohms. As any electronics engineer will tell you a ?10 meter from your local motor factor will most likely be very inaccurate when measuring low resistances. I have a Fluke 289 multimeter....proper precision instrument.... But they cost over ?500. Sorry but a cheap meter probably won't help. Fine for continuity tests and finding 12 volts but not so good at measuring low resistances. That's why I have a Fluke meter.

Thanks for all your advice - the article by van der Meyden is indeed very useful.

Using this I did the following

Established that 3 wires had continuity (therefore Yellow, Brown & White)
Using my (good quality SP) meter established the resistance between two wires was 8.4 ohms (therefore Brown & White) and the other two 10.4 ohms (therefore brown and yellow)
Two other wires had continutiy therefore Blue & Green. Cannot work out which is which but I don't think it matters so have taken a 50/50 on this.

Connected all to a battery to test and all seems to work - both fast and slow - so thanks for all your help on this.

Myles

Excellent news...either works or not!