Morris Minor Owners Club

Hi,

I've Just bought my first moggy. However the wipers aren't working, so I took the glovebox lining out to discover the wiper motor is on the driver side. Elsewhere on the message board it always seems to say it's supposed to be on the passenger side.

Any ideas as to why it's on the wrong side, or more importantly how to fix the wipers?

Thanks.

On Split screen cars the wiper motor is on the right side behind the inst panel or glove box. On M1000s the wiper motor is in the engine compartment on the left inner wing.
There are earlier posts on removing early wiper motors

What's the problem with the wipers?

Thanks Mike, yeah, I've seen them. I just got worried as all of them seemed to say it should be on the passenger side.

I'm not sure, I was just told that the wipers weren't working when I bought it. I don't think it's the wiring, so I'm going to take the motor out today and have a look at it.

Check the fuse first, are the brake lights and indicators working? Check the power supply and earth connections.
Don't go diving in unless you have triple jointed tweezers on the ends of your hands. Don't drop the nuts and bolts down the A post and read the earlier postings

Exactly - eliminate all the external factors before getting in to that v difficult motor location !

indicators and brake lights are working. I checked the connections with a Volt metre, and they all came out around 8/10 V, but there was 0Ω resistance through the motor itself, so I'm thinking short circuit?

I've managed to get the front casing off the wiper gear box (without loosing any of the screws) but can't extract the cable rack. The BL manual says to remove the split pin from the final gear so you can lift off the connector to the cable rack, but i see no split pins or the space a split pin once was.

Why would there only be 8/10 volts ??? Something strange there...... And does your metre (sic) measure low Ohms accurately? I would be more concerned if I saw Infinite Ohms....... ie an open circuit......

I assume the battery is just a bit low, it's been sitting for a good couple of months before I bought it. Not sure how accurate it is to low Ohms, but it was on the lowest (2Ω) setting, so gave a reading to 0.01Ω.

I wouldn't even expect the wiper motor to run with that voltage ! Charge the battery - there's likely nothing wrong with the wipers....

I hope that you have removed the wiper arms or wet the screen before testing the motor
You should be able to lift the crank rod off the gear wheel and rack if there is no split pin, then test the motor.

all the other electrics are working fine though? I'll try charging it tomorrow.

The screen was wet, don't worry. I tried just lifting the crank rod off, but it was stuck fast, I'll try some WD40 on it tomorrow.

Even if its not the motor, I think I need the gearbox out anyway, the grease is solid.

'all the other electrics' aren't motors...... except the starter of course -I bet it doesn't do a lot at 8 volts.......

Remove the spindle nuts and push the wiper spindles into the car then withdraw the complete assembly

I've managed to get the motor/gearbox out.

Even with new battery and no load the motor isn't doing anything. I took the motor apart and there seemed to be rust inside it, and the spring holding the brushes to rotor was snapped. Do you reckon a new motor is on the cards, or is that fixable?

New wiper motors are £140

on ESM its a new one is £74. but yeah, that's why i'm hoping its fixable.

Forgot to say, when i tried it (no load) it heated up, but no movement...

Can you turn the armature by hand?

The armature turns by hand with a bit of resistance (not sure how much it should have).

I think it is the brushes, or rather the arms which hold the brushes. Which I can see on a spares site