Wipers & Horn not working

[ThomasJ]

Another Saturday and another question... I have working through all my electrical issues with the help of this forum and so far so good. Todays challenge is getting my wipers and horn working, I have taken the wiper mechanism apart and cleaned it so that it now moves freely. I tested the wiper motor by apply 12v directly to it and it works as well. When I turn the wipers on nothing, removed and cleaned the fuse still nothing. I have looked at the wiring diagrams and to be honest they are over my head. I was hoping that I could get some basic instructions on where and how to test, I purchased a multi-meter but it has been over 36 years since I last used one. I mentioned the horn not working as when I was reviewing the wiring diagram I noted one common point on the diagram that the horn and the wipers appeared to have in common. Any help will again be greatly appreciated, please remember to dumb down your responses, when it comes to electrical it is a bit of a challenge for me.

Update: PO had pulled fuse L and wired a switch across it (don't know why he would do that), I removed the swich and placed a fuse in there and now when the horn button is pressed I hear the relay click but still no horn. Closer....
I measured the voltage at the horn, almost 12v Yahoo! Cleaned the grounds and then got a squawk out of the horns, victory was short lived as no sound at all. I'm going to switch the horns with my 81 parts car and hopefully that will be it for the horn issue.

Wipers: A PO had disconnected at the intermittent relay and under the dash, as well had done some chopping of wires and masked the joints with tape. It appears that whenever an issue cropped up rather then fixing it correctly he would simply splice in direct power, the same had been done for the flashers because the hazard switch was bad. Slowly getting everything back to stock. Fuel pump bypass is next...

Thanks in advance,
Thomas

[124JOE]

check for power at the speed selector

[ThomasJ]

Thanks Joe, I pulled each of the three plugs off of the speed selector and attempted to measure voltage from the wire to ground, a big zero on each one of them. I am going to try again tomorrow as I was a bit rushed in doing this. I also found that the Intermittent switch by the relays was disconnected, reconnected it in but still no wipers. If indeed there is no power at the speed selector what's next?

Thanks,
Thomas

[124JOE]

test the wiper switch"on the colum if it doesnt have power you should give it temp power "to see if the system works" then find where power comes from and repair or bypass as i did with coil wire

hope this helps

[dmwhiteoak]

Stay at it. Looks like your making progress and this is how you learn. Your maybe not as electricaly challenged as you think. I personaly have not been to deep into my electrical system other than my headlights , tail lights, break lights and blinkers . Keep us posted .

[ThomasJ]

Well isn't always the way, bypass the obvious and look at the more challenging; the PO had unplugged the wiper controls under the dash as well as everywhere else. Reconnected all the plugs, cleaned up where some chopping and splicing had been done and everything works as it should!