Fried Wipers

[adamsclarke]

Any idea what would have caused this wire to melt? Its the wiper harness that plugs into the wiper motor? I fished it down to see what happened..and the melted section only goes about 6" into he wire. At that point, the wire has no visible crack or cut.

Only thing I could think of..is the wire harness had a cut or crack where in enters the truck under the cowl and managed to short when it touched the body.

Think it's safe just to splice in a new piece an inch or so after the melted part?...cuz I have no idea how far r where that wire goes

 

[MUSKYMAN]

I would be asking why the fuse didnt blow?...thats a car fire that almost happened.

I would be tracing 100% the length of that wire to find the short and replacing the fuse on that circuit.

were the wipers running slow or labored(sign of a bad motor) or acting intermitantly when on the regular setting?

 

[adamsclarke]

I'm unsure of what the wipers were doing. I just got the truck and the wipers weren't installed...but the motor looks new.
I'll check the fuse...who knows...someone could have replaced it with the wrong fuse causing th wire to melt before the fuse popped???

 

[adamsclarke]

Good call muskyman.....on further inspection....the wiper fuse under the steering wheel should have been a 10 amp......but someone had replaced it with a 25 amp.
I assume that's what cause the wire to fry when it grounded out instead of popping the fuse.

 

[MUSKYMAN]

yep...and my bet is that the motor was getting bad and popping the 10 amp fuse so the moron just threw a bigger fuse in there...if thats the case then the wire may not have been shorted it may just have been cooked from the higher load then it was designed to withstand.

I would still be checking that wire from end to end and also checking the wiper motor.

good luck

 

[adamsclarke]

OK..so I finally had a few minuted to hook up the new wipers etc from will....and it looks like my problem is more than 1 fried wire. After it didn;t work...I looked at the switch in the column. @ wires were fried there (what a mess) and it fried the switch.
Looks like another will tillery call is in order for a switch and plug.

That looks to be the main parts of the problem...but any idea what caused all of the wires to fry?

 

[MUSKYMAN]

if the motor was the issue in the first place and then it was run on the higher amp fuse in all likely hood 100% of the circuit would now be suspect IMHO

bummer but not as bad as a car fire