Intermittent wiper setting

mcniece

The intermittent wiper setting on my '93 Plymouth Grand Caravan has stopped working. I hear a faint, regular clicking sounds when on intermittent, like a signal is being sent. The constant wiper settings still work fine. Also, possibly related to this, the wipers will not return to the bottom of the windshield when I turn the wiper control off. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. I have searched the forum and found only one similar problem but not exactly the same as mine. Thanks!

4minivans

I have a 1996 Plymouth voyager with the same problem. According to my shop manual, if you put battery voltage to the wiper motors #4 terminal and ground # 7 terminals the wipers should return home. I tried this, they did not return so I replaced the motor (according to the manual). Same problem. I later replaced the turn signal swith, same problem. The latest info is to replace the body control module.
I'll let someone else do this, I've spent enough money. Please reply if you resolved your problem.

mcniece

I still have not fixed this problem, but just use the regular wiper settings and manually shut them off when the wipers are near the bottom of the windshield. One interesting thing about this problem is that the intermittent settings stopped working about 5-6 years ago, but then about 2 years ago they just started working again. Last year they stopped again. The dealer's price to fix this is too high. I am not familiar with the body control module part- is this the same as the engine control computer? If you ever get this problem fixed, please let me know how you did it. Thanks for your post.

tcar321

I had this same problem a few months ago, and came across the solution on another forum at the time. The problem is the relay , under the hood. The problem is the relay gets corrosion on one of the connections. Switch out the realy and problem is fixed. I believe there are actually 2 different relays, one is for the intermittent, the other for on. You can just interchange those two and the problem should be fixed. However, I ended just replacing both of them a week later, because it started acting up again. But after I put in 2 new relays, the problem was fixed. That has been about 6 months and no problems since.

mcniece

Thanks for your reply! Do you know if the relay is mounted directly on the firewall or elsewhere in the engine compartment?

xwesx

If you have the third generation van ('96-'00), it is located in the black rectangular box under the hood on the driver side, just to the right (as you are looking at it with the hood up) of the battery. The underside of the box's lid indicates which relay is which.

mcniece

My van is a '93, and does not have anything resembling a black box under the hood with relays. There are a number of relays (7) in a row mounted to the inside of the engine compartment on the driver's side, but none are labeled. There are also other relays in the engine compartment, but I cannot tell what might be for the wipers. Any suggestions? Thanks.

xwesx

Oh, sorry.... I did not realize you have a second gen. I have to recommend a Haynes manual at this point; it is cheap and likely will decipher the relay mystery for you!

change2007

We have a problem with our 2008 T& C van. The windshield wipers will turn 'on' by themselves and won't turn off. At the same time we also lose our ability to use our turn singles. Also the campus goes 'out' too.
It is really scary when this happens as you are driving down the road.
Has this happened to others?

womannsidekick

I have a 97 Dodge Grand Caravan Sport with issues with window wipers intermittent start. Mine went out on me a few months ago. It has a mind of its own, sometimes it'll start out of the blue and other times it just don't start at all. The only time that I can get it to work by pushing in the arm to disperse the fluids to clean the windows and then nothing else. How can I correct this issue before we have a major rainstorm? I'm afraid I'll get stuck driving on the highway, which that happened once, but luckly, I was close to home, but anyway, how can I correct this?
Will I need a motor or I read here about a relay and corrosion. Any suggestions for me?
Thanks for your help. I appreciate all that can help me.

shipo

We've had two 1998s with the wiper issue, our first didn't get bad enough to ever bother messing with, however, our second is currently sans wipers. The previous owner of the second van said he recently replaced the turn-signal stalk, so that means I'm headed to the bone yard this weekend to buy a new wiper tray (the black tray that sits between the windshield and the hood from which the wiper arms sprout). I'm thinking that I'll simply replace the tray, motor and all, and see what happens. If that doesn't work, I'll be buying a new motor to install in the original tray.

I'll keep you posted.

womannsidekick

Thanks, I'll be on the lookout for your solution. I priced a new and it's $70, if I could bypass that then I'm all good. Thanks for the reply

shipo

Post mortem on the wiper fix...

Okay, I have (mostly) good news; the wipers on my son's 1998 T&C seem to be working, for the moment at least.

Situation: Over the last six months the wipers became more and more argumentative, and finally got to the point where they wouldn't function at all in any mode.

What I've done:

1) Based upon the claim by the previous owner that the wiper switch (turn signal lever) had been recently changed, I bought a new motor and swapped it in (kind of an annoying job, especially when I noticed that the motor I pulled out was obviously recently remanufactured). The new motor didn't do anything and turned out to be a waste of both time and about $70.

2) Thinking that maybe I misunderstood the previous owner, I ordered a "multi-function" switch (none of my local shops carried this switch), and when I opened the box two days ago, I found a turn-signal lever for a 1994 Nissan Pathfinder (contrary to the correct Gen 3 Chrysler part number on the outside of the box). A couple of phone calls later and I had the correct part in my hand as of last night. Tonight I put it in (five screws and 1 plug, nice and easy), and once again, no improvement; the entire wiper assembly was completely dead. Another waste of time and $116.00.

3) I had the van in my nice quiet garage tonight (as opposed to working on it outside with kids, cars and whatnot making noise of all sorts) and I heard a relay clicking from under the hood every time I tried to activate the wipers. "Hmmm," I thought, "something is happening." I pulled the cover off the fuse panel and took a good look at the schematic. I unplugged a few of the relays and rotated them around, all seemed to be working but still no wipers. I then pulled the 30A fuse for the wipers (quite a chore getting that sucker out with just my fingers) and noticed some corrosion on the terminals. I gave them a quick wire-brush treatment and plugged it back in. BINGO! The wipers worked!

After thinking about this for a bit, it makes at least some sense. I remember seeing a schematic for the multi-function turn-signal stalk a few years ago, and the wiper control specification indicated that the different speeds and such were controlled by differing thresholds of resistance. If the fuse block had some corrosion on the terminals of the two Wiper Control relays and/or the Wiper fuse, then the levels of resistance would probably not be exactly what the system was expecting; and that might very well result in finicky wiper control.

At this point I'm going to keep a close eye on things, and if they start to deteriorate again I'll pull the entire fuse block and give it a good once-over; that or I might just pop for a new block entirely.

Oh! About the turn-signal wiper switch I pulled out; looks pretty new and has the exact same marking on it as the new one that I just put in. I suspect I now have a perfectly operable wiper switch as a spare. :P

reon

Good post shipo!

jhale1800

FYI: I have had the same problem for months with my 2004 V6 Mustang. It's been happening more and more often. Just took it in, and it turns out it is the GEM module.