Hi everyone,
Yet another minor electrical annoyance or "feature" with my Marea.

The wipers won't park - that is they stop where they are the instant I turn them off. Using the single flick function makes them move but only until the instant I release the lever.
Intermittant is working as normal speed. Normal speed and fast are working as normal, but as soon as you turn them off from any position, they stop where they are.

I was thinking that there must be the same type of contacts inside on the gearwheel as there are on the rear motor, so I stripped the motor and found them. At first I was hopeful because everything was gunked up in grease - so I cleaned it all up and bent the contacts slightly to make a better contact. A quick look at the circuit board on the motor doesn't reveal anything obvious, but I don't really know what I am looking for if I am honest - all wiring looks OK.

Are there any other things I can check, or do I need to replace the motor?

You must be in the right area with those contacts. Do you have a meter? If so you can check that power is getting to to the supply side, and then if it is getting across to the switched side. You can also use a 12v bulb and some croc leads if you dont have a meter. It may be an open in a crimp connection to the contacts they can look fine, but not pass current.

Do you mean at the switch (steering column stalk) or the motor? The switch is definately fine.
I will look into power at the 3 contacts in the motor though, there is certainly a live and an earth (obvious since they work!) - but I suspect something with the circuit board in the little box atop the motor, and that's beyond me for a repair if that's it.

But I will get out there with my meter and check everything.

Back when I were just a lad there was no such thing as self parking wipers, we just turned them off when they reached the bottom of their stroke.

I've gone all misty now remembering - No radios (unless you owned something expensive when they took a few minutes for the valves to warm up before they came on). Heaters as an optional extra! No heated rear screens. Freezing cold vinyl seats in the winter, hot and sweaty vinyl seats in the summer. Tyres that had a homing instinct for every ditch. 60 mph top speeds! Un-assisted drum brakes all round (sometimes operated by cables!) - 60 to 0 mph in about a mile or so and 0 to 60 mph that you needed a calendar to time not a stopwatch.

Best of all the Ford windscreen wipers that worked off inlet manifold pressure so the faster you were driving the slower the wipers went!

You lot don't know you are born!!!

The switch on the column will be OK, I would expect the problem to be in the contacts on the motor. If its a PCB then a meter may find the problem. Also just re-making the solder joints might do the trick if some have gone "dry"

Finally solved this yesterday after far too long getting annoyed with the wipers :bang:

I took the motor off and stripped the control box and started testing every part with the multimeter. I finally found a section where the power wasn't getting through.
Re-soldered those points and retested everywhere again and it looked good.

Put everything back together again and turned intermittant on.... after a few sweeps it seemed to "learn" it's position again and it now all works fine.
Certainly cheaper than a new motor - even a scrap one.

Thanks for the help narrowing it down. :worship:

Interesting thread.
I had this problem and found a motor in a scrappie (£35). It was easy to fit . I kept the original one so shall have a go at fixing it now to keep as a spare.
Nice one. Thanks lads.