***Fixed*** Wipers don't work, have checked all the usual stuff.

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tunamelt
Posts: 13
Joined: Thu Jan 11, 2018 4:49 pm
Currently Drives:: 2008 Megane ii 1.5Dci 6spd DPF(fap)

Re: Wipers don't work, have checked all the usual stuff.

Postby tunamelt » Sun Jan 13, 2019 1:21 pm

Hi guys, resurrecting this post from last season.
This wiper problem has returned this season under the same description, caused after the same weather pattern: Cold and Wet.
Last season, this problem seemed to correct itself. The only real action I took was to take out the UPC and UCH and dry them by the fire. After that, the wipers worked for a short time, then the problem returned, then went away again. Very confusing, I have no definitive solution to offer the forum. The problem is exactly the same as last winter.

The car worked 100% through some extremely heavy rains over the summer season, no issues with the wipers.
Now that the cold and snow is back, the wipers have acted up again: work while engine is cold, but slowly begin to stop in place as engine heats up. Then will only work on high setting(although moving at low speed), and eventually will quit altogether, at wherever position they happen to be. If I switch off the wipers for a few minutes, they will work on high setting again but for only some seconds.

This seems to be more related to cold weather than to wet weather.
The symptoms indicate that some electrical component is heating up, and then failing until it cools down.

It occurs to me just now that the interior heater is used only in cold weather. Seems possible that the heater is blowing hot air on an electrical component, UCH for example. The heating duct does cross directly under the UCH(Interior Multiplex Module).

Is this idea even plausible?
Are the electrics in the UCH that sensitive to heat or maybe even sensitive to cold?
If not, then it sure seems like an electrical contact could be shrinking in the cold and pulling apart somewhere.

I've just gone out to the car to test this problem. Without starting the car, the wipers will work for some seconds and then stop in place. There is something weird about the high setting, since it aggravates the problem. Once aggravated, the high setting is the only one that works, although for a limited time and at low speed. Battery voltage is strong and all other functions have full power.

I will do a test by parking this car in a heated underground garage overnight and see if the problem is corrected by warmth, as it was at the end of last winter.

Any other ideas?
Is it possible that my dash heater overheated the UCH?
Is it possible that an electrical contact can pull apart because the metal shrinks in cold?

Any and all suggestions are appreciated!

Konrad

tunamelt
Posts: 13
Joined: Thu Jan 11, 2018 4:49 pm
Currently Drives:: 2008 Megane ii 1.5Dci 6spd DPF(fap)

Re: ***Fixed*** Wipers don't work, have checked all the usual stuff.

Postby tunamelt » Thu Jan 24, 2019 9:23 pm

This problem is now fixed, so I will post the problem and solution here in case anyone else comes across this in the future.

Last year when I tested the wiper motor and wires going to it, I made the mistake of assuming that different wires should have voltage, depending on high or low speed wiper switch setting. It turns out that only pin 2 should have voltage. Pins 3 and 4 communicate with the wiper motor by using different resistance levels as a sort of code to tell the motor what to do. Seems way overcomplicated to me.

I also was wrong in the way I tested the wiper motor itself. I fed voltage to pins 3 and 4 (I think) and got low and high speeds from the motor, and assumed that was correct. It was not.

***The real problem was corrosion on the electrical contacts inside the wiper motor.***

The fix was super simple. Remove the black plastic cover which has the electrical socket, and clean the light corrosion from the 3 side-by-side contacts at the base of this cover, as well as the single ground contact which pushes against the metal body of the wiper motor under the plastic cover.

The car is now 100% again, cheers.

lordmat
Passed Theory
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Joined: Wed Nov 07, 2018 8:07 pm
Currently Drives:: Megane II 2007 hatchback facelift - 1.5 dCi 78kW K9K 732

Re: ***Fixed*** Wipers don't work, have checked all the usual stuff.

Postby lordmat » Fri Jan 25, 2019 7:56 am

Great work! Congratulations on the repair! Every post should be like this.

Thanks for posting the solution. I'm sure it will help others.

ewensmith
Posts: 1
Joined: Fri Feb 01, 2019 3:38 pm
Currently Drives:: Megane Extreme

Re: ***Fixed*** Wipers don't work, have checked all the usual stuff.

Postby ewensmith » Fri Feb 01, 2019 3:51 pm

Long time viewer, first-time poster here.

Excellent write up of your issue. I've been having the same problem with intermittently working wipers over the past month and finally got around to having a look at them today. High-Speed mode usually worked for me.

Thanks a lot for your tip to check the pins on the underside of the motor gearbox cover. Initially, I cleaned just the ground but this didn't solve my problem, but after reading this I reopened the unit and found a black residue on the high and low-speed contacts. I cleaned them and bent each of the pins out a bit from the outer side of the cover using a flat head screwdriver. The contacts on the cover are shaped in a U, and fit a U-shaped contact on the motor body, so opening the male side on the cover a little will increase the force and make for a better connection.

Before reconnecting the plug I checked the resistance between all of the pins - which was worthwhile as the first time I put back on the cover it was a little misaligned and all of the pins were shorting.

For anyone else out there with the same problem - I have slightly different wiring to the author. Depending on the position of the wiper blades, Pin 2 may be in contact with the ground, and would show low resistance.

Pin 1: Ground
Pin 2: Position Feedback
Pin 3: Blank
Pin 4: Low Speed +ve
Pin 5: High Speed +ve

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Re: ***Fixed*** Wipers don't work, have checked all the usual stuff.

Postby Stranger » Tue Feb 05, 2019 5:28 pm

tunamelt, well done and thanks for a great how I did it write up, contributions like that prove that this repository of information is well worth it :tu
STOP DEVELOPMENT ON GREEN FIELD SITES! http://www.cpre.org.uk/

albertdrake
Posts: 1
Joined: Wed Sep 25, 2019 7:39 pm
Currently Drives:: Renault Megane GT 2.0T 2009

Re: ***Fixed*** Wipers don't work, have checked all the usual stuff.

Postby albertdrake » Wed Sep 25, 2019 7:42 pm

Thanks so much for sharing your experience with great detail. I'll be trying this myself today. My mechanic (Renault expert, worked for the dealer) thinks it's just the motor sticking up to itself (he made it work temporarily by hitting it hard), but I had a Clio MK3 with flooded wiper motor, and found out that the pins weren't making proper contact with the body due to grease in between that my dad had to put after drying the motor after it being flooded.

Fingers crossed!

MarkFord
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Joined: Wed Nov 27, 2019 7:34 pm
Currently Drives:: Mégane II SPORT 1.4 petrol

Re: ***Fixed*** Wipers don't work, have checked all the usual stuff.

Postby MarkFord » Sun Dec 06, 2020 12:11 pm

Thanks to this thread I have fixed my own wiper motor this morning. Lots of grease and black residue on the contacts which when cleaned off made everything work perfectly.

With the clips on the cover that exposes the worm gear and contacts is almost like that it's made to fail and be fixed!

Thanks.

bobbaldilocks
Posts: 14
Joined: Tue Nov 19, 2019 5:49 pm
Currently Drives:: Megane 2's and a Grand Espace and a 330d m sport Touring

Re: ***Fixed*** Wipers don't work, have checked all the usual stuff.

Postby bobbaldilocks » Wed Dec 09, 2020 10:47 am

Superb summary which not only reveals the true fix right at the end like a gripping thriller but unearths the locations of a number of electrical components along the way and explains their function. All good stuff for future diagnostics.

Last night was the first ever instance of something adrift with my wipers on the 07 1.5dci Tourer and the issue manifest itself in exactly the way Konrad describes it, with the intermittent function starting to fail, going all the way up to complete freezing mid way over the screen. I had been sat in the car in the local Aldi carpark with the engine running and the blower going full blast both on external and recurculation modes demisting the windows. It makes you wonder whether the under dash / scuttle panel heat present in those conditions is a trigger point that reveals the connection weakness on the wiper motor.
Thanks again Konrad for going through all of that pain and posting it here, cheers


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