For the windscreen wiper assembly I decided to retain the Mini wiper motor and connect it to the Starlet wiring loom rather than try and create a complex adapter to graft the Starlet wiper motor to the Mini wiper rack/cable assembly. I needed however to first determine if the Starlet wiring could handle the current draw of the Mini wiper motor.
I had to purchase a new Mini wiper motor due to the old one having severe corrosion/damage to the motor and casing :
I laid out the entire Toyota Starlet wiring loom on my workbench and connected it to power & grounds (there are multiple grounds in the wiring loom). Using my benchtop lab power supply I tested the slow, fast & intermittent functions, confirming the Starlet wiring and switchgear was working. The current draw of the Starlet motor on high speed was 1.88 Amps.
I attempted to measure the current draw for the Mini wiper motor however the motor was not rotating and was maxing out the 3 Amp limit on my power supply. I pulled the motor apart to find that the brush retaining plate was broken and several of the carbon brushes damaged - this was a brand new motor! It looked like someone had slid the armature into place and damaged everything by not moving the brushes out of the way. I sourced a replacement mounting plate and carbon pieces and reassembled it correctly.
Once repaired, I tested the Mini wiper motor and the current draw was 2.2 Amps. At only 320mA more than the Starlet motor, this meant the Starlet wiring size should easily be up to the task of running the Mini motor.
Because both the Starlet & Mini motors were 2 speed with Park function, the wiring matches up as follows (info sourced from www.ausmini.com forums)
Aussie Mini.....Rover Mini......EP82 STARLET...EP91 GLANZA...Function
Dark Green......Dark Green.....Blue................Blue...............12V+/Permanent
Black.............Black............Black...............White-Black......Earth/Ground
Black-Green.....Brown-Green...Blue-Yellow......White-Green.....Park/Intermediate
Red-Green.......Red-Green......Blue-Black........Blue-Black.......Slow/Low
Blue-Green......Blue-Green......Blue-Orange.....Blue-Yellow......Fast/High
I connected the matching Starlet wiring to the Mini motor and confirmed that all park, variable speed intermittent, low and high speeds worked correctly.
The brand new Mini wiper motor is designed for a UK Mini and the ferrule supplied with the motor was a different thread and to that on my Australian Mini. The Australian ferrule would also not fit in the new wiper housing either so I had to make a new ferrule to connect the UK wiper motor housing to the end nut on the Australian cable rack tube.
The old Australian Mini ferrule, the ferrule for the new motor, and custom ferrule I made :
The custom ferrule fits nicely in the new motor housing with the top piece of it designed to (mostly) seal the mechanism. Note : the cover, gear and other wiper rack parts are not fitted in this photo :
The original wiper motor is mounted directly onto the bulkhead via 3 holes, however the new motor uses a saddle, and rubber mounting pad between the motor and bulkhead (I assume for vibration & noise isolation) so I installed two rivnuts for the new saddle.
The old wiper wheelboxes were useless due to the heavily worn threads so I had to purchase a pair of new wheelboxes.
The rubber bushes that sit on top of the scuttle panel were also old and had gone brittle and broken.
The problem was that the rubber bushes that came with the new wheelboxes were probably designed for a round nose Mini and I found out bushes for the Mini Clubman are no longer available. This photo is of a UK bush, original (broken) Clubman bush and a UK bush I sanded down :
Despite the success in using my belt sander to sand down a new bush, it didn't have that the extra angle at the top of the bush (see the top of the middle bush in photo above) resulting in small 1mm gap in the panel, which would allow water to enter behind the scuttle panel.
I decided to make some new ones out of black HDPE rod on the lathe where it was machined to approx 30mm OD and cut/sanded at the same angle as the original bush. The new one is also ~5mm thicker than the original bushes because the shafts of the new wheelboxes are slightly longer than the original ones. The original Australian bush and new HDPE bush :
The original bushes are rubber which when compressed by the wheelbox nut would stop water getting into the engine bay so I had to made a new washer/gasket. From some 2mm rubber sheet, I cut a ~15mm hole and sanded the size and angles with a die grinder sanding bit, then slipped it over a 16mm tube and used my disc sander to sand it down between the pair of HDPE bushes I made.
The rubber piece was inserted in between the HDPE bush and scuttle panel to provide a waterproof seal when the nut is tigthened.
I had to purchase a new Mini wiper motor due to the old one having severe corrosion/damage to the motor and casing :
I laid out the entire Toyota Starlet wiring loom on my workbench and connected it to power & grounds (there are multiple grounds in the wiring loom). Using my benchtop lab power supply I tested the slow, fast & intermittent functions, confirming the Starlet wiring and switchgear was working. The current draw of the Starlet motor on high speed was 1.88 Amps.
I attempted to measure the current draw for the Mini wiper motor however the motor was not rotating and was maxing out the 3 Amp limit on my power supply. I pulled the motor apart to find that the brush retaining plate was broken and several of the carbon brushes damaged - this was a brand new motor! It looked like someone had slid the armature into place and damaged everything by not moving the brushes out of the way. I sourced a replacement mounting plate and carbon pieces and reassembled it correctly.
Once repaired, I tested the Mini wiper motor and the current draw was 2.2 Amps. At only 320mA more than the Starlet motor, this meant the Starlet wiring size should easily be up to the task of running the Mini motor.
Because both the Starlet & Mini motors were 2 speed with Park function, the wiring matches up as follows (info sourced from www.ausmini.com forums)
Aussie Mini.....Rover Mini......EP82 STARLET...EP91 GLANZA...Function
Dark Green......Dark Green.....Blue................Blue...............12V+/Permanent
Black.............Black............Black...............White-Black......Earth/Ground
Black-Green.....Brown-Green...Blue-Yellow......White-Green.....Park/Intermediate
Red-Green.......Red-Green......Blue-Black........Blue-Black.......Slow/Low
Blue-Green......Blue-Green......Blue-Orange.....Blue-Yellow......Fast/High
I connected the matching Starlet wiring to the Mini motor and confirmed that all park, variable speed intermittent, low and high speeds worked correctly.
The brand new Mini wiper motor is designed for a UK Mini and the ferrule supplied with the motor was a different thread and to that on my Australian Mini. The Australian ferrule would also not fit in the new wiper housing either so I had to make a new ferrule to connect the UK wiper motor housing to the end nut on the Australian cable rack tube.
The old Australian Mini ferrule, the ferrule for the new motor, and custom ferrule I made :
The custom ferrule fits nicely in the new motor housing with the top piece of it designed to (mostly) seal the mechanism. Note : the cover, gear and other wiper rack parts are not fitted in this photo :
The original wiper motor is mounted directly onto the bulkhead via 3 holes, however the new motor uses a saddle, and rubber mounting pad between the motor and bulkhead (I assume for vibration & noise isolation) so I installed two rivnuts for the new saddle.
The old wiper wheelboxes were useless due to the heavily worn threads so I had to purchase a pair of new wheelboxes.
The rubber bushes that sit on top of the scuttle panel were also old and had gone brittle and broken.
The problem was that the rubber bushes that came with the new wheelboxes were probably designed for a round nose Mini and I found out bushes for the Mini Clubman are no longer available. This photo is of a UK bush, original (broken) Clubman bush and a UK bush I sanded down :
Despite the success in using my belt sander to sand down a new bush, it didn't have that the extra angle at the top of the bush (see the top of the middle bush in photo above) resulting in small 1mm gap in the panel, which would allow water to enter behind the scuttle panel.
I decided to make some new ones out of black HDPE rod on the lathe where it was machined to approx 30mm OD and cut/sanded at the same angle as the original bush. The new one is also ~5mm thicker than the original bushes because the shafts of the new wheelboxes are slightly longer than the original ones. The original Australian bush and new HDPE bush :
The original bushes are rubber which when compressed by the wheelbox nut would stop water getting into the engine bay so I had to made a new washer/gasket. From some 2mm rubber sheet, I cut a ~15mm hole and sanded the size and angles with a die grinder sanding bit, then slipped it over a 16mm tube and used my disc sander to sand it down between the pair of HDPE bushes I made.
The rubber piece was inserted in between the HDPE bush and scuttle panel to provide a waterproof seal when the nut is tigthened.
Comments
Post a Comment