Honda Wiper Motor Upgrade for the 240Z

[johnbell47]

SteveJ, that got me high speed only. no park, no slow. I did find out that the first way I had it wired (DirtKing) that I had low and park, not high like I thought. If I can get the high and low switched and just have high and park, I'll be happy, I think I have enough sense to be my own intermittent switch.

[johnbell47]

Oh, one more thing. the relay on the datsun motor is what makes it go intermittant, I experimented on the bench with a battery charger and it would go fast, slow and intermittant with what is just there on the motor, so that relay is the intermittant one. And it's the blue white on the Honda harness that you dont' want to ground,,fuse kaplooey!

[SteveJ]

Actually, you could blow a fuse by grounding any but the black. Since my diagram accounted for all but the blue/white, I wasn't as worried about your grounding the others.

I'll see if I have time to measure the voltages at the 260Z harness side for the functions soon.

[johnbell47]

yep, I checked all before i started and found every wire there hot, except the black. that must mean we are switching the grounds. anyway, i rewired the auxillary relay back in, but with the knowlege that on yours system i now had high, so i switched the blue red in the datsun harness to go to the blue yellow in the honda harness. i now have high..i also switched the green black and my wiper washer pump comes on with the wipers when i push the wash button. So, I now have high, park and wash working..Now for getting low to work!!

If anybody is confused here, it looks like blue red on the datsun is high, not blue yellow as was picted before.

[SteveJ]

There's nothing like getting empirical data to figure out what's going on. I took current, voltage & resistance measurements to figure out what I didn't have right.

Blue/red should go to green/black. That is the 12VDC for the motor.

The blue & blue/yellow from the Z should be connected as I suggested.

Try the blue/white from the Z to the blue/white on the motor for the parking function. If that doesn't work, try the yellow on the Z to the blue/white on the motor. (The last is a guess. I traced the yellow wire to the heater subharness. I wasn't expecting it to go there.)

[johnbell47]

website acting wired again, if you get two post, don't think a thing about it. I found that the car to wiper harness plug changes color on one wire, I can't remember which but I did do a diagram of it, right now, its miller time...I do have fast, fast and clean, and park at the moment. I'm only missing low...

[johnbell47]

You remember that I did not have a yellow black wire? Well I pulled the original combo switch that I had changed out. It did. I ran a continuity from it to the wiper harness under the hood. It has continuity with the solid blue wire. The harness from the combo switch plugs into a short extension harness that has ALL BLACK wires, the other end plugs into the under dash harness, but guess what, the colors don't line up with the pins. I am going to have to run continuity on all of the wiper switch wires. None of this rig looks to be jacked up, spliced or anything but stock. Bear with me, I'm tired but I think I'm on track. Anybody care to check if they have that little 8 inch extention right after the combo switch, I think you can see the floorboard end without taking off the combo switch cover...

[johnbell47]

I finally got everything working. I had to check continuity from the combo switch to the wiper motor harness and re label the wires. the color coding was way wrong at the wiper end. I'm thinking that Datsun had a few old harnesses left over that were a little short, so they put the 8 inch extention in that had all black wires and did not pay attention to the pin coding. Anyway, after I relableled the wires to the correct color and by using Z"sOndebrain's diagram, it worked the first time. High, low, park. By the way, this is worth doing, these wipers kick!

[johnbell47]

I failed to mention that I got to looking at the wire size coming out of the Honda motor..It's way bigger than the Datsun wire. I decided to add a "Hot Shot" relay to just use the Datsun wiring to trigger a relay that was wired to a new fuse block that I have under the hood. I used 12 gauge to run the motor from the relay. I am afraid that the Honda motor must pull some serious amps to work as good as it does and that the old Datsun wiper switch and wiring might be getting a little weak after 38 years. I used that technique the first time on the weak starter signal to the solenoid when the thing failed to start, worked there and worked here. Taking the pressure off those old switches is always good.

[skillinp]

Hi all, a couple of months ago I did the upgrade with a '97 Accord motor, using this forum and the following link as a guide:

http://www.atlanticz.ca/zclub/techtips/wipermotor/index.htm

Mostly because it was easier for me to find a motor online for that specific car/year than for the Civic or Acura motors.

I ended up figuring out what the wiring was myself, just based off where the wires were coming out of, and comparing that with where they came out of the motor itself (the colors of the wires didn't match up with any diagrams I could find). It works great, except for the intermittent setting which makes something like half or 3/4 sweeps across the windshield instead of full sweeps. I'm not sure if that's clear, but what's happening is when I set it to intermittent, the wiper goes up and then a little down, then stops right in the middle of the windshield for a second, then it does the next sweep which takes it down and then up where it lands it someplace else randomly on the windshield (not the same place). If I turn it off, it settles back at the bottom where it's supposed to, the same as if it's going constantly and gets turned off. This means that it just looks dumb when I'm using intermittent, but at least I don't have to worry about it parking correctly at the bottom when I turn the wipers off. Does anyone have any idea how I could make the intermittent go all the way instead of most/part of the way? I'm not sure if I wrote that clearly either, so let me know if I need to clarify anything.

Another note: I used shrink wrap to wrap all the wires at their connections, in an attempt to keep them as dry as possible. Thanks for the great guide!

[tamo3]

Rain season is over here in CA, but I'm about to have wiper motor upgrade for my '75 280z.

Following '75, '77, and '78 FSM and this thread, I drew diagram for wiring.

Edited June 6, 2013 by tamo3

[Mikes Z car]

skillinp,

You did your post here last January, I also installed a 97 accord wiper motor. The park switch is a rotating switch inside the case on top of the plastic gear (a copper brush and a piece of metal mounted on the gear). The motor turns the gear and switch which makes sure the wipers park at the bottom of the windshield by connecting the park switch across the same place the low speed wires connect. The park switch is open when the wipers are at the bottom of the windshield and closed otherwise. When the intermittent turns on briefly and then off the park switch keeps the motor going until the wipers park. That is why your wiper keeps stopping in various places on the windshield, the intermittent turns the motor on briefly expecting the park switch to continue providing power to park the wipers but the park switch never takes over. The original wiper motor in my car (1970) used a relay for the park function. The relay makes sure the park switch lasts a long time. The wipers on my car with the 97 accord motor do not park but once I connect the park switch it will make intermittent operation (with an intermittent gizmo from an auto parts store) and park possible, something I will add when everything else is done. This is all assuming that when the 97 accord motor was installed I ground the shaft flat sides at the correct angle as the park switch rotation position for park cannot be changed.

Trying to compensate for the switch turning off at the wrong time with an electronic time delay is chancy as that approach assumes the speed of the motor is constant on each wipe but I personally feel the approach might have merit from the standpoint that the wipers would park in approximately the same position each swipe which might be less annoying than the wipers stopping at random points. Anticipating further work on this I connected a 14.7K resistor in series with the wire on the wiper motor that I think is the park switch (blue/white wire-gives an open circuit to ground on park) as I wasn't sure what the other end of this wire connected to and didn't want to blow a fuse. From inside the car a time delay circuit could be rigged to this wire (or a relay with the other end of the coil at 12V) which would connect to the slow wiper wire making a pseudo park workable, I hope. I hope this lengthy diatribe helps a teeny bit.

Mike

Edited June 7, 2013 by Mikes Z car