I finally got around to pulling the wiper switch out only to find it had been "repaired" once before.

They did a "bigger the glob better the job sort of solder", but the part that throws me for a loop is they added a jumper. I cant find any write ups with the addition of this jumper. Does anyone know what they were thinking here?

 

does that connect to the pins for the relay on the other side of the board? if so, maybe they were trying to bypass the relay. regardless, i'd find another switch and bench test. and if it's no good, just replace the relay. so nice to have int. wipers again!

 

i've fixed bad boards with a jumper, so this is also possible?

 

I checked another switch and found that those two points should be connected, hense the jumper.

 

Note the pin and solder joint just below and to the right of the middle of the jumper wire. That one is connecting to nothing (they probably destroyed the trace), so that's prolly why the jumper wire.

 

I have fixed my wiper switch I dont know how many times. I finally said **** it and rigged up some relays on the harness and installed toggle switches under the radio. One switch for low and the other for high. I may swap it over to a three way toggle switch later (no bueno to have high and low flipped on at the same time!) or just buy a new switch.

Now I got to **** with my headlight switch on wednesday...lost parking lights and interior even though I have the relay mod.

I REALLY REALLY hate the electrical system on these cars. Garbage!

 

Fixed generally entails changing the relays. Did you clean them only or just re-solder joints?

Once fixed properly, the wiper switch should be ok for another 20 years, lol!

 

lol, i semi recently acquired the JDM wiring diagram, and its tricky to look through because its in japanese, but i have been surprised at how different the JDM cars are from the US, they aren't a mirror image, they are actually fairly different, and the JDM car is simpler

 

Probably because the North America version has airbag or no airbag, turbo or non turbo, mouse belts or not, 6 different audio systems, two different power steering systems, two different air conditioning systems, california or federal, day time running lights or not....

The list just goes on and on!

I did fix my headlight switch today though and discovered engineering FAIL. I am doing a write up with pics SO DON'T THROW AWAY your bad headlight switches.

 

i don't know about that, although i did run across an instance of the different models, and its a bit weird, as usually i agree with Mazda's choice, but in this case i think it makes no sense.

so i have a couple of JDM S5 engine harnesses, and i wanted to use one, the US cars have an FEM-01 connector and an FEM-02 connector right inside the firewall, the JDM harness just has the one, i got out the books and the multi meter and set to work.

the JDM harness only has the one connector, as it doesn't have the wiper motor or cruise control on the engine harness, like the USA cars do, which is fine. so i'm only looking at the one plug. first surprise is that in the USA it is called FEM-02, and in Japan it uses the alias X-23.

anyways, not to bore you with details too much (i have a spreadsheet!), the USA version comes in three flavors. Turbo, Manual n/a and automatic N/a. the a/t has a couple of extra wires for the a/t computer, and then the turbo has the boost sensor reference.

the JDM harness by contrast does a/t AND mt, which is something that the US harness could do, but didn't.

the other odd bit was that instead of making the pinout of x-23 and FEM-02 the same, and just adding the second connector for the US spec stuff, they didn't. they added some US spec stuff to the FEM-02, and then moved a couple of universal wires to the other connector!

 

That joint actually has proper continuity as do the rest of them.

I replaced the relays in 2 other switches that I had with the LO only symptom now they are like another couple switches I have that HI and LO work and INT begins to but stops. Also they don't park.

It appears there is something else wrong. I can hear the relay clicking away when it is on INT but nothing happens...

 

I have to reread the wiper switch fixes floating around. I know they talked about one of the relays controlling park and or int. But yeah something doesn't add up. Btw u got a spare wiper motor just to compare?

 

If you find the detail on the other relays and what they operate, please send that my way. I know the relay that commonly fails is the one that I replaced and that one allows the HI and I thought INT to function.

I'm starting to question the wiper motor as well. I probably have a couple of them somewhere that I can use to test.

 

So I started thinking more in depth about how the park feature works and realized that the motor needs to get power and ground at a time when the wiper switch is off.

So sure enough when I checked for power between the black and blue wire on the motor I had zero volts. It turns out the black wire was not properly grounded.

I grounded the black wire and everything worked. Now I have 5 spare working wiper switches. Should be enough to last me as long as I have RX7s!

 

Lol yes, the motor has (at least) a constant 12V+, a ground, and a trigger (+). When it starts moving, it keeps moving till the park switch inside it ends (it's like a wheel with circular conductive strips that start and stop). Kind of like the headlight retractors but a little different, lol.


The how-to I used actually doesn't say too much about what each relay does, so I must have remembered wrong or maybe it's on another how-to. Here's the one I followed:

http://fc3spro.com/TECH/HOWTO/WIPER/wiper.html

Found it:

http://rotarydiagnostics.com/WiperRepair.htm

See section on removing wiper relay, below second pic in that section. Says what relay is for what.