Hi everyone,

I have this crazy problem with my windshield wipers in my 1996 Jaguar XJR.

At first they started to work only on sunny days... funny at first, then not so much.

Now I have isolated it to a particular position of the steering wheel. Any help here from someone who has fixed this before would be great! Aaron.

I shot a short video capturing the problem hoping that could help thing out a bit.

Video:
Thanks,

Aaron.

 

You likely have a short. Check the pins inside of the wire connector to the wiper switch. It would seem that in one position the wires are stretched, and at the other end they are compressed as the steering wheel geometry changes. Since they always work when the steering is tilted to the same position, it would make sense that is the point of optimum contact, and when the steering wheel changes position, the electrical contact is is stretched to the point where contact is no longer being made - which would be a typical sign of one of the metal pins in an electrical connector not being fully seated in the connector.

See the upper left pin in the connector in this picture is not fully seated?



You could have a similar problem.

 

I just fixed this problem with my 96 VDP yesterday and I thought I would chip in in the hopes that it might help others. This seems to be a relatively common problem.

To be clear: my symptoms were exactly the same as Aaron's.

Because none of the functions were working when the wheel was oriented just so, I suspected a grounding fault. Spoiler alert: that's exactly what it turned out to be.

I cut the zip-straps attaching the wire bundle to the black plastic "rectangle" behind the ignition and parallel to the doors. This piece has a track at the end closest to the ignition can be removed by sliding it upward. Be careful, though, it also attached by a screw behind the plate which must be removed and the tab carefully guided around its attachment point or it will break off. (IE don't do what I did.)

To diagnose I removed the plastic cover above the steering column, as well as the pieces Aaron removed. This is a bit tricky as the screws are a bit hard to find amongst the tangle of wires. Once this is off, you can see the two bolts securing the wiper lever assembly hidden behind the steering wheel. You do not have to remove the wheel, rotating it 90 degrees to the right will expose the bolts. Remove the bolts and ease out the assembly gently but firmly. Don’t bother removing it entirely; just leave it hanging there. The wires are soldered on the back of this assembly.
I have a bunch of wires with alligator clips on each end. I attached one to the frame and touched the other to the solder attachment for the black wires on the back of the assembly. Sure enough, the wipers start moving on all settings.
I then removed the tape from around the bundled wire leaving the wiper unit and lo and behold the black ground wire had been connected to another coming from who knows where and to a common ground wire using the flimsiest crimp (about 2 mm long) I have ever seen. The two wires were still securely crimped, but the common ground had separated. Of course, the oddity of the steering wheel position determining whether the wipers worked was instantly clear.
I did a proper job of connecting the grounds together and bob’s your uncle. I shudder to think of the money needlessly spent replacing the whole unit because of this poor connection. Of course, the new unit would work perfectly because the fault was between the wiper unit and its electrical connector.
I am not sure whether this was a one-off, or a common design flaw. Hope this helps.

 

HI.

Had the same wiper problem with my '96 VDP. Turned out to be a broken wire from the steering column from all of the flexing. The wipers have been perfect since I found and fixed that.

Bill Livingston

 

Had the identical problem with my 97 XJ6. Your description and remedy was spot on. I found the failed grounding crimp near the main plug end of the wiper switch harness. Just as easy to remedy this problem by repairing existing switch harness as it would be to replace the switch because you'd have to crimp new connections on the speaker so save your money and do it this way.

Thanks for taking the time to document this solution.