I recently replaced the wiper motor on my '89 Volvo 240DL. Everything was working fine except that the wiper arms would park a couple inches higher than the bottom of the wiper swing. After some time a new problem emerged. Now the wipers do not work at all except when the wiper switch is in the very bottom/fast position, and they do not return to a parked position but stop immediately when the wiper switch is moved out of the bottom position. Basically the wiper switch acts like a hard on/off switch, but only in the bottom position.

I have read various forums suggesting it could be a bad wiper motor, or poorly grounded wiper motor, or could be the relay. Would the wipers work at all if relay was bad? Anyone have experience with a similar problem?

 

I have a 93 240 and wipers work in all modes but I cannot turn them off! I have found that if I move the lever to the off position and hold very slight pressure on it the wipers stop but you have to time it right to make them stop in the bottom position. If I release the slight pressure too soon they will just continue working. Any ideas on how to remedy this?

 

Frank you have a problem with the handle you are using to turn on the wipers and off.There is some loose connection in the handle so you got to take that off and check if there is a loose wire inside or replace it with another.N8love,I think you have a bad relay but could also be the grounding.You can add a new earthing wire from a screw on the wipermotor to the body of the car.

 

the wiper motor should have two power wires to it, one is powered whenever the engine is on, and the other is powered only when the wiper switch is on. inside the motor/gear assembly, there's a switch mechanism that powers the motor from the 'always on' wire until its in the 'home' parked position. this way, a brief pulse on the 'switch' wire starts the wiper, then the wiper's internal switch powers it til it gets back home.

Franks symptoms seem to indicate there's multiple problems.

 

Isn't it amazing how old threads never die. They just keep coming back from time to time.

I just replaced my wiper motor with a new one from FCP. The old Volvo motor's ring gear finally developed a crack and was spinning on the shaft. I put the FCP unit in and I had EXACTLY the same problems that n8love had - very same symptoms. We've got rain in the forecast and I just didn't want to send the new one back to FCP. So I gambled and took the cover off of it to see if I could find the problem and I DID!! YAYYYY!

It seems that when I went to plug the old Volvo connector into the FCP connection, one of the spades on the FCP got pushed to the inside of the gear housing. I took a pair of needle nosed pliers and worked it back onto the Volvo connector and that was it!! Good as new!

On mine, it was the blue lead that came out of position.