• Hi Guest!
    If you appreciate British Car Forum and our 25 years of supporting British car enthusiasts with technical and anicdotal information, collected from our thousands of great members, please support us with a low-cost subscription. You can become a supporting member for less than the dues of most car clubs.
    There are some perks with a member upgrade!
    **Upgrade Now**
    (PS: Subscribers don't see this gawd-aweful banner
Tips
Tips

Spitfire Wiper Switch 78 Spitfire and Wiper function

Share this page

J

Joe_Pinehill

Jedi Hopeful
Offline
Now that the car is running reliably I can look some of the extras. I noticed the wiper switch has three positions. On my Spit, only the top most position turns the wipers on and off, and I have to more or less manually park them them by turning off the wipers when the arms are more or less down.

Is this normal. Do the wipers have other functions in the other positions? Is this a sign of a bad "parking switch " on the motor?

I have power to the pump, which I replaced with a generic from NAPA last summer. And the switch works fine for the pump.



It also seems like the column switch for the 78 and up is not available from most of the usual mail order shops, though it looks like SpitBits has them.
 
The wipers have two speeds, the first "up" position on the wiper switch is 'Slow', the top position is 'Fast' (well, sort of fast, everything's relative, right?). Bottom position is 'Off'.

Pushing down on the switch stalk from the 'Off' position should operate the wiper arms momentarily. This position should be spring-loaded, and the stalk should return to the Off position when you release it.

Pushing on the end of the stalk works the washer pump, as you have figured.

Pull the connector to the wiper motor and see if you're getting continuity from the switch in these positions. If so, the switch should be ok and you're problem is probably in the wiper motor.

The motor does have a Park switch in it (which can be bought separately if its gone), and if you take the wiper crank box apart I think you can adjust where the crank is supposed to be when the switch is in 'Park'. I think it's possible to mis-align if someone has opened the crank wheel box before.
 
Problem solved, the spade connector on the parking switch carrying the
slow speed voltage broke off. The switch checked out fine, when i
held the broken spade terminal, the motor turned.

Luckily this is the one of the less expensive parts.

Problem though, I demated the parking switch connector, cleaned with
electrical parts cleaner, not to liberaly. When I remated, my Motor
squeels ...:(. The motor had been running fine until I demated, and
cleaned. Hopefully its poor contacts/low current? A new switch might
help this.

While I am changing the park switch cant hurt to lube the gear also.

thanks for the help
 
Glad you found it.

The squeal sounds weird. But I would definitely take the crank case apart and clean it. There's not much in there and its pretty easy to open and clean. These get badly gunked up and they can bind.
 
Back
Top