'86 245DL Fuse Box Location / Wiper problem

Hi everyone,


I just bought a 1986 245DL. When I got it, the wipers weren't able to
park by themselves. Yesterday, they stopped working all together. The
washer fluid, rear wiper and horn all work fine.

I would like to check the wiper fuse but I cannot find the fuse box.
There is a panel in the driver side footwell (left of hood release) but
it's confusing because the label says, "Fuse box located in engine bay.
See owners manual." Sorry if this is a dumb question, I have searched
Google and Brickboard and can't find much.

Thank you very much.

 

Hello:

I've owned a number of 240's and my first was a 76 242 DL. On that and
all others the fuse panel was located at the driver side
footwell--although there may have been a secondary fuse panel located
in the engine compartment. I simply don't recall now. I can say there
is no secondary fuse panel in the engine bay on my 93 24o wagon.

Anyway, remove the fuse panel cover in the driver's side footwell.

In the US and Canadian markets the wiper fuse is 16 amperes and is
fuse #2 (second from the top.) This is clearly indicated on the label
on the inside of the cover. The left side of the label indicates fuses
and what they are for in French, right side is in English.

The labeling may vary depending on your country of residence--but my
guess if the location of the fuse will not, as that would make no
sense.

Note: while you have the fuse panel open it's a good idea to remove
every fuse, clean all terminals with emery cloth of fine sandpaper
and then "squeeze" then together gently to ensure the fuse will fit
tightly. Late 70's and early 80's 240's were notorious where I lived
for failure of the fuel injection system or erratic performance--which
was nearly always a "loose" fuse (#6) for the FI and fuel pump.


It's also not a bad idea to coat the terminals with a light bit of
dielectric grease.

I still remember an incident back in 1982 when I was on a remote
section of I-5 in California. A woman was stranded with her fairly new
240 and the Triple A mechanic was baffled. 5 minutes later she was on
her way and the Triple A guy (pretty sharp tech) had learned something
new about Volvos. He HAD checked the fuses and they looked good and
"felt" tight but that one was not.

Good Luck!

Doc

 

Hi Doc,

In addition to your excellent advice re cleaning the terminals and fuse
contacts, "squeezing" the terminals, and coating with dielectric grease, I
would like to add my 2¢ worth:

To finally (hopefully?) end this troublesome corrosion problem, replace all
of these ceramic fuses which have grey-colored metal contact ends with
correct amp value types which have brass/copper ends. I found that my local
Volvo dealer didn't stock them (shame!) but an outfit specialising in VW
parts did (humiliating!).

This should end the "galvanic action" between the dissimilar metals. ( At
least......... that's my theeeeeeery.)

Regarding the "fuse box located in the engine bay", perhaps this refers to
the little box attached to the positive terminal of the battery, containing
four "blade-type" fuses. I'm not sure if our '86 had this but our '93 does.

Good Luck.
Andy I.

 

Thank you all for your good advice. Despite the panel's vague
information, the footwell panel does seem to be the main fuse box. The
wiper motor fuse looks fine - I even replaced it with a new one, still
no dice.

The wiper motor seems to have a 4-wire harness attached to it. Oddly, a
yellow wire is clipped. I noticed this was disconnected since I had the
car (even when the wipers were working). I'm wondering if it was why my
wipers wouldn't park.

Anyway,
I used a 12V test bulb (engine off, ignition key to power
'accessories', wiper switch on) and attached the ground to the chassis
and the red wire to the red wire to the wiper motor, and I got a
light. Can I deduce from this that the motor is bad, since it doesn't
function despite it receiving adequate power? Can a motor fail quickly
with no sign? I hear nothing from it, it just stopped working one day.

Also, is it worth pulling the motor apart to see if the magnet is
broken? This seems to be a common 240 problem.

Thank you all very much for your advice. This is my first 240 and this
is definitely time looking at an electrical challenge... maybe these
two things are related.

Pravin

 

Yes, yellow is for parking. There's probably a problem with the park
contacts inside the motor, causing the fuse to blow, which is why the
wire is snipped. Make sure the motor is grounded - the motor is mounted
on rubber feet, there's just a thin metal contact wrapped around one of
them for ground, while later motors had a separate, dedicated ground
wire. Also, with the ignition and wipers on low speed, make sure the
brown wire has power. And finally, a dead interval relay can cause the
wipers not to work - to test you can join the black-white wire to the
white wire (relay out) where they go into the relay. The relay is
usually a black 6 pin relay hanging on the harness behind the dead
pedal.

--
Mike F.
Thornhill (near Toronto), Ont.

Replace tt with t (twice!) and remove parentheses to email me directly.
(But I check the newsgroup more often than this email address.)