1992 P30 Wiper Gremlin

[Dachristianman]

When my 1992 Winnebago Brave sits for long periods of time (or sometimes overnight), when I turn the key on, the windshield wipers will decide on their own to start wiping. They will stay on sometimes from a minute to up to 5 minutes. Eventually, they'll return to the home position and everything works fine. It doesn't happen every time and there is no way to duplicate it that I have found. Any ideas on what could cause this? I'm leaning towards the intermittent wiper controller, but I was wondering if anyone else has experienced this?

Tom

[Joatha]

I used to have a 1990 Winnebago Chieftain and I also had some wiper issues. I would suspect that since my old Chieftain and your Brave are only 2 years apart and both on a P30 chassis that they have a very similar setup.

My issue was that my wipers would just randomly turn on. Over time, it got more frequeent - to the point where they would be on almost all the time. I could turn them on and they would stay on as they should. But, when I would turn them off, they still would randomly come on. Unfortunately, I never did fix it. I did notice a noise that would occur when it would kick on and off. It sounded like a small relay kicking on and off and it was definitely associated with the wiper coming on and off.

I traced the noise to the wiper control module - which is in a silver box on the wall underneath the dashboard. I never did get around to pulling the unit to check it out. About the only thing I ever did was disconnect it - which meant the wipers didn't work. It was a pain to get to and disconnect. But, I would suspect you are having issues with the same control unit. I never was able to find out who made the unit nor where I could buy a replacement. As such, I never got around to doing much about it.

My solution ended up being to remove the fuse (which was more like a small relay than a fuse) in the fuse block under the hood (driver's side). Like disconnecting the module, it turned off the wipers completely. But, it was easier to reconnect than the under-dash control module. I then used RainX before any trips and I didn't have to use the wipers. If I did have to use the wipers, it was easy enough to pop the hook and put the fuse/relay back in place.

[Dachristianman]

Thanks for that. I'll check to see how accessible the motor is.

Tom

[jplante4]

Some of the old Chevy chassis have a motor that drives a disc inside the wiper mechanism. The disc has contacts on it for the various modes. There's usually some kind of dielectric grease in the gearing/drive to keep things moving. I'm guessing this grease is gone or gooped up to the point where the motor won't drive it.

You can pull the wiper motor assy out and disassemble and clean it or find a similar unit on e-Bay or a junk yard. It's actually a simple job if the motor is accessible.