For a couple months my reverse lights have stopped working, and so has my rear wiper, on my lights i just checked the fuses and the bulbs are good... what could the problem be on both of these issues....? As far as i remember i do not remember my reverse lights ever working (since mid summer when first bought, and finally found out they didn't work end summer) and my rear wiper did work at one point, stopped working maybe month and a half ago...

If any suggestions before i take it to a mechanic.... it would be grealy apperciated. TY

 

reverse lights are probably due to a disconnected wire going to the transmission. the wipers are probably due to a failed switch, as that is common. the problems are most likely unrelated. a mechanic can probably fix the reverse problem for you if you don't want to tackle it, but the wipers are most likely beyond their scope. I would suggest searching for somebody in the Rx7Club that rebuilds them.

 

ANYBODY IN THE RX7 CLUB REPAIR THE CARS AND CAN TELL ME WHAT THE PROBLEM IS WITH THE REAR WIPER!! my neighbor knows his share of car stuff, so if the reverse lights can be fixed with a decent knowledge, of cars, please tell how.

 

oh yeah, and how to fix the reverse lights. ty

 

does the wiper make any sounds, or is it toataly dead?

 

deader then a door nail, fluid still shoots though

 

The circuirts are isolated from eachother, so they ahve nothing to do with eachother other than the fact they both don't work...

Reverse lights: Probably just disconnected wire. Jackup the car and look for a harness on the transmission. It is a seperate harness, only two pins/wires on it. This is a switch, if its not hooked up, hook it back up. If it is, I'd just wire around it.

Wiper: I'm guessing its the switch personaly. Does everything else on the wiper switch work? If not, checkout mazdamark.com for rebuilt switches. Where I got mine and i works 100%. He'll core your old switch too.

The easiest way to check though is to turn on the wiper switch, and head to the hatch with a multimeter to see if the motor has power back there. If the motor has power but doesn't work, its the motor. If it doesn't have power at the motor/harness, then its eitehr the switch or the wiring. More likely the switch unless you've been rewiring your car and snip wires for fun.

 

First off, jack the car up a bit and take a look at the wiring that runs to the tranny switches. The reverse lights run off of a dedicated switch on the tranny, and either it could be bad, or the wiring could have broken. If it's just the wiring, then it's an easy fix, not one worth paying a mechanic for. But you'll never know until you look

On an S4 NA tranny, anyway, the reverse switch wiring is red, two seperate wires with bullet connectors. The harness wiring is black/yellow and red/green. The switch is on the left side of the tranny. The switch will be open in all other gears but reverse, and will of course be closed in reverse...

 

ty guys. i will get back on here if i have more q's

 

ok guys. I tested the reverse light switch and i was able to get continuity and 12 volts when the car was in reverse, and none when it wasn't. I checked all of the plugs I could find. I wasn't able to get 12 volts off of either of the reverse light plugs, but I was able to get continuity to ground. Still do not know what is wrong with it.

 

If the switch and wiring are good enough to get you the 12v there, then you have a wiring problem between the switch area and the reverse light sockets...

 

not nessesarly wayne...

see it is pretty common to have the reverse light switch get dirty contacts internally. This results in low current handling. So the switch will test okay with a meter on resistance, but fail completely when running 35 watts through it.

I thought I covered this to death a couple years back, but [sighs] people don't always search.

So there are two solutions...

1. Replace the switch
2. Use a relay so that the switch activates the relay, then the relay handles the high current going to the lights.

BTW:This is a common problem on the FC and NA/NB (Miatas) with manual trannys.

As far as the rear wiper, I doubt it is the switch. If it is the wiper switch the rear wiper will still often work at one speed. Since he said the rear wiper does not work at any speed, that points more to a bad connection on the strut or a bad wiper motor, or misadjusted wiper arm.

 

That is what I thought about the reverse lights from my tests. Are there any specific areas to check between the plug and the switch that are prone to failure? I don't think that the switch is problematic because I wasn't getting ANY voltage to the plug that goes to the light sockets. Also, I did check the rear wiper motor and found the motor to be bad.