Classic Alfa Forums

My S2 column switches are iffy. (The type with metal rods)

Wipers only work on fast.
Dipped beam needs the arm jiggling about.

Is there a fix for this?

.........I'm not a purist.
Could I swap to S3 switches?

I found it wasn't a straight swap in the rally car.
Still can't get the wipers to park

Rsfruitbat

Yes, the connections are different between S2 & 3. If you can get them opened up it's just simple brass connections, which will have furred up. Seem to think they're rivetted together so could be drilled out and screwed back together..

The non self parking wipers will be within the motor itself, there's a circular plastic disc gear that has brass rings on it for the contacts to run against. The one that is full circle is for constant running, the one with a gap is the self park one. They usually get grease and crud built up and the contacts lose their tension. Cleaning the grease off, bending the tabs a little more and a quick rub with some sandpaper usually gets them going again.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pa4jv8FvjAQ

Like on this video, but don't pull the motor apart like he has done, no need. The part you need is at 3-30 or so, you'll see the part I mean and how the grease gets between the contacts and the powered ring. You can take the plate off to gain access to the ring without pulling the electric motor apart.

I took mine off and pulled a strip of fine wet and dry between the contacts a few times to clean them up a bit.

Depends if it’s worn / dirty contacts or a more mechanical issue.

I didn’t dare take them apart, too many little springs and levers for my liking.

Thanks for that Kev.
Thought it was a wiring issue as I never had any problems with the chrome stalks. As soon as I fitted the S3 stalks the park wouldn't work.
I will add it to my to Do list!

Rsfruitbat

Ah, if the problem arised immediately then it could be a wiring issue, check at the motor to see what power you have at the wires.
You should have a live feed to the motor even when the wipers are off, this is the self park feed. It feeds the brass ring inside that has a cutout in it, so when the motor disc with the rings on turns around to the cutout the motor stops turning.
When you activate say the slow speed wiper power is fed to one of the rings with a full circle, so the motor keeps spinning. Now, for the wipers to self park what happens is this. Let's say you turn the wiper stalk to the "Off" position when the wipers are vertical, that cuts power to the brass ring that is full circle, but as I said before you should have power to the self park ring with the wipers switched off. So when you have now turned the switch to Off the motor keeps spinning as there is power to the self park ring, until it turns around and the contact feed reaches the gap, at which point there is no power going through so the motor stops, or "parks"
Hope that makes sense!

So in summary, for the wipers to be able to self park it needs 12v power to the self park wire/terminal . You will be able to deduce which wire this is by a process of elimination, I may dig out a haynes manual and have a look at the wiring diagrams, see if I can trace the colour coded wires, but think there's only 4 going to it. Slow speed, fast speed, self park and earth,,,,from memory..

Forgot to say my heater fan only works on one speed.

And if I get into the rhythm of my one speed wipers, I can turn them off in the right place!

Thank you all for sharing the knowledge! For some reason it never came to my mind that the wiper motor has something to do with park position of the wipers. On my S3 33 the park doesn't usually work, and the intermittent position has variable breaks between the wipes, might swipe twice or more, and is also likely to stop to wrong position. So far I have taken apart the stalk unit (drill out the rivets and replace with screws), cleaned it, replaced the relay related to intermittent wipers, and been busy with multimeter in general. Looks like I need to take apart the wiper motor too.

On my car the the high beams won't come on unless I jiggle the light switch, and that made me suspect the stalk unit on the wiper problem as well.

Don't know if this helps but when the early S3 cars came out they had different wiring up of the connections of the column switch which meant when the later type of switch was fitted it did not work properly.
They required a change to how the pins were connected up on the switch block connection - see below