Speaking of electrical glitches...

[cgsheen1]

This morning I jumped into Goldie to head to the shop and when I turned the key, the windshield wipers twitched. This has never happened - switch was off, but they jumped just a bit and stopped. I thought it was weird but continued to back out of the garage.

I noticed my volt meter (ya, Goldie should have an ammeter being a 260Z, but this was a turbo swap from the beginning of my ownership - with a ZX alternator - so I eliminated the shunt right off and replaced the ammeter with a 280Z volt meter / fuel gauge)

Anyway,, I noticed my voltmeter was dropping to 8-9 volts momentarily and it was doing it in a rhythmic pattern. Drop for half a second and go back to normal for 3 or 4 seconds and repeat. Tried the wipers, no worky. Tried to think of what worked in a rhythmic pattern like that and couldn't come up with anything but the intermittent wiper delay.

Yup, stopped at the Quickie Mart and unplugged the wiper motor under the hood. Weird voltage glitch went away. Don't know YET what actually caused it, but will be checking through the wiper circuit(s) when I get a chance.

Goldies wipers hardly ever get used cuz:

A. Arizona...

2. Even though she's my daily driver, I don't ever drive in the wet unless I absolutely have too...

 

 

[SteveJ]

Where did you tap into for the voltmeter signal?

There's a blue/red wire coming off the ignition switch and goes to the fuse box. It goes to the radio fuse coming out as a blue wire and the wiper fuse where it comes out as a blue/red wire. I'm guessing one of those wires, probably the blue wire is the signal for your voltmeter. If the blue/red is having intermittent contact to ground but not enough to blow the fuse, it could pull down the voltage on both circuits.

Unfortunately you can't just pull the fuse for the wipers as that will also kill power for the reverse lamps.

[cgsheen1]

2 hours ago, SteveJ said:

Where did you tap into for the voltmeter signal?

That's been so long ago that I don't even remember.

2 hours ago, SteveJ said:

Unfortunately you can't just pull the fuse for the wipers as that will also kill power for the reverse lamps.

I was going to do that but I don't have a fuse cover and didn't remember which fuse. Good call, because I wouldn't have remembered that either. 

Disconnecting the connector to the wiper motor removed the short so maybe I'll start by plugging in another wiper motor and see what happens. However, I'm more inclined to believe it's in the intermittent wiper timer electronics...