E30 Zone

My wipers on the cabby., when you press the stalk down to perform a single sweep, nothing happens! unless you hold the stalk down. If you let go of it during this, the wipers will stop in that position & then slowly park themselves. The other speeds will work, as soon as you turn them off the wipers, they very slowly park themselves. Fitted a new motor yesterday, no change, any ideas?

If the motor is beyond suspicion, try a different wiper control module in the fusebox. (Large black rectangular box)

Thanks Brian, I'll try that first.

I have the same problem - I suspect it is the wiper control module in the fusebox. I went to the local scrappy to source one (they had about 8 E30s last time I was there) - Only one E30 was left there, with no fuses or relays at all. it had been stripped bare

I'll swap mine with the one in the touring, I'll let you know the outcome.

Swapped the relays around, still the same, stuck now.

Well, there's only the motor, the 'relay' and the wire/connections between them involved! Especially check the brown earth wire from the motor, as, IIRC, it's only used for parking the motor.

is the "Contact Disk" changed with the motor ?

This can be fixed easily by rebuilding the wiper motor as described in the wiki, don't use the old grease like I did, and I now have the same problem! In the cold weather the grease really thickens up and exacerbates the problem. The cause is the wiper positioning system being dirty and not making/breaking the circuit as it should.

Thanks guys, I'm going to take the motor apart & rebuild it, at least if nothing else, I can elimate that as being the problem.

Took apart wiper motor yesterday, I guess this might be the answer to my problems!




I'll clear away the old grease, re-grease it with LM grease as per the wiki page, hopefully that'll cure it

Specifically, it's the dirt on the white plastic notch causing you problems. This is where the motor should stop.

Do you mean the plastic bit in the middle?

The plastic notch in the face of the metal disc where the contacts run. This plastic piece breaks the circuit and tells the relay to stop the motor. At the moment no circuit is being made because the grease is too thick and hence the wipers stop anywhere.

I think I understand now, the plastic indent at the bottom of the disc, bottom right of the 1st picture?

The metal disc (top picture) spins over the sprung electrical contacts (bottom) when the wipers are operating.

When it's operating correctly and is clean, the two sprung contacts make a circuit against this disc, when the disc rotates and the outer contact touches the plastic notch or break in the periphery of the metal disc the circuit is broken and it's at this point the relay knows to stop the motor and all being well, the wipers will be at the bottom of the screen!

Aah, That would indicate why this fault only happens on the single sweep/intermittent setting & not the slow/fast speeds. As its caked in grease, its getting a confused signal hence jerky wipers?!

That's it, during normal operation the motor operates continuously, the constant movement tends to clean the conacts a bit and then they stop where they should. In intermittent mode the relay/control module is always looking for the broken signal to stop the wipers, hence the old grease, even thicker now we're in winter, breaks the circuit causing the wipers to stop in the wrong place. I still havn't rebuilt mine for the second time, but I do know exactly what the problem is at least!!!

Mate your a star, remind me when you come to a Portsmouth meet next, to buy you a drink, I've cleaned the old grease off of it now, alot of work, used kitchen towel, WD-40 & contact cleaner, it was stuck in there, good & proper. Gonna to re-grease & then Saturday re-fit, hopefully thats problem solved.

Ah my wipers are playing up in cold weather too.. might be ANOTHER summer job to add to my list

TPS wrote:. Fitted a new motor yesterday, no change, any ideas?

I think your definition of new may vary from mine!

The main problem Andy, is removing the wiper motor itself, theres limited space to work in, You have to remove the heater panel(good idea to grease the heater bearings at the same time), even with that removed, you have to force the thing through a small gap.

Brianmoooore wrote:

TPS wrote:. Fitted a new motor yesterday, no change, any ideas?

I think your definition of new may vary from mine!

Yeh Brian, I was re-assured it was new, I'll have to look at the dictionary for that.

How did you get on in the end? I've just rebuilt mine for the second time this morning and all is well now!!

Glad I found this thread. Rebuilding my front and rear wiper motors has now gone on the list of things to do this weekend!

Bump need some help!

Have taken the motor out and cleaned it all out.

However, on putting it back in, my intermittent setting still doesn't work and now, the fast wiper setting doesn't work! Is there anyway to diagnose the relay itself?

stupid question but you did put it all back together correctly??

i know that it can take a day or so of use for the intermittent to return properly, something to do with the grease settling i think, it said somewhere on one of the how to guides.

School boy mistake! I'd cleaned the outside of the disc, but didn't appreciate that the inside needed cleaning too. Have given it all a clean and grease and it's now 100% everything is spot on.

Good news!!