Morris Minor Owners Club

Slightly odd one, this.

Have a clap-hands 1000. MOT'd in Aug, wipers worked. Well, they moved across the screen, anyway.

Couple of weeks ago, it started raining, so I turned on the wipers. They moved, slowly, for a minute or so, then stopped. Midway through the sweep.

Handily, I have a 2-speed conversion kit in the garage that I never got round to fitting. Perfect opportunity to swap for a new motor, I thought, imagining that the original had finally burned out.

Not so. Original motor still works, when disconnected from the wiper rack.

Right, so the rack's clearly crackered...

Remove wheelboxes (2-sp kit has new ones) - lots of swearing and a hacksaw involved in that simple job!

Stripped entire rack out of the car, to renew grease and free it up. Inner element REFUSES to move at all. Absolutely seized up inside the tube.

Any bright ideas on what might have happened to jam it so monumentally? And - naturally - on how to free it off so I can remove the inner rack element and either grease it up for more abuse or replace it?

Also, instead of the horrible little flicky-switch supplied with the 2-sp kit, I have purchased a new pull-out-type Minor light switch (2 positions, side and head) to be the new wiper switch. It'll then match the rest of my dash switches/pulls.
It has three posts on the end - any clues to an electricity-phobe on how to connect the wires to the posts to make the b*gger work?

I intend to use the original one-position wiper pull to operate an as-yet-unsourced electric screenwasher. Hints and tips for that, too please...

Water ingress may have simply rusted the internal moving part of the rack, or the outer tube of the rack may have a kink in it (easily done where it passes through the bulkhead) thus pinching the inner rack.

Might be a good idea to change the brushes in the motor too, lack of "oomph" in a motor is sometimes due to worn brushes not being able to supply the necessary current.

Cheers

The rack was seized before I removed it from the car... but, as you say, water might have had an effect... Can't see how the wipers would work one week but then be so rusted in place that they won't budge at all, mid-use...

New motor ready to go in as part of the 2-speed conversion...

But need to get the inner and outer parts of the rack assembly apart, before any progress can be made...

I would not have thought that rust would form and lock the rack up as quick as that, is it possible the inner has snapped inside the outer and this is causing the lock up. I have not seen one apart so can't offer a solution if this is the case. Perhaps it's possible to pull the inner from the opposite end from the drive?

i had the same problem on my car.

worked fine on the way to work seized solid on the way home.

The problem for me was grease in the rack.. it dries over time and eventually the motor is notable to overcome the initial friction in my case

I resolved it by pulling out the inner drive cable part 15 in this diagram.

http://www.morrisminorspareparts.co.uk/ ... r-assembly

it needed all my weight to pull it out of the rack.

once it is out clean it up, re grease it before putting it back in and out a few times until no old grease is left.

what are you intending to do with the old motor as i would be interested in buying it

Here is the circuit for using a standard Minor 2-position headlight switch for 2-speed wipers:
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The feed is a green wire from the A4 fuse and you need 2 5-pin changeover relays to make it all work. Make sure that the relays have the 87a terminal (normally 'on'), there are other 5-pins relays about that have either a second '87' terminal or an 87b terminal - these will not work for the wiper circuit.

Richard, thank you very much for the wiring diagram.

I will have a friend's nephew over to help - he shares his Dad's innate understanding of electrickery and also his ability never to get a hell of a belt off anything...

Finally managed to get the cable out of the tube... a mighty pulling match... turns out there is a tiny crimp in the tube right before the first wiper box (God knows how, as the wipers had not been disturbed for over 50 years) which was totally jamming it... I have almost smoothed it out, using a suitably-sized Philips screw driver pushed into the tube...

Wire-brushed the goo off the entire cable and reassembled... it doesn't move as smoothly past the kink as in the rest of the tube, but it does move.

Will try to completely straighten out the kinked dink in the outer tube before the whole lot goes back into the car and I then try to work out how to a) get the new wheel boxes to operate in a clap-hands manner and b) park in the correct position - both of which require a degree of fiddling with the motor and associated gubbins, I understand...

Richard, re the wiring...

the kit I have comes with a complete loom, multi-plug to wiper motor and four spade connectors to connect to the nasty flick switch.

There are no relays nor any provision for them.

Should I worry?[frame][/frame]