Do modern cars have intermittent wiper relays ?

I’ve got a 1990 Land Rover Defender.
It had a 3 position (off, slow, fast) wiper switch.
When it broke I bought a second hand 4 position (off, intermittent, slow, fast) switch.
I’d like to be able to use the intermittent option.

There’s a place next to where I work that buys and sells, and sometimes weighs in, cars.
I’ve had a look through a few scrappers, but can’t find anything that looks like a wiper relay, nor a flasher relay, for that matter.

Do modern cars use intermittent wiper relays, or is it all done via the ECU these days ?
I’ll buy a new one if I have to, but I’d rather blag a free one if I can.

Intermittent? How uncouth, automatic dear boy.

golf mk2 used to have this – it was a popular mod with vauxhalls to replace the relay

My 2008 Citroen has an intermittent setting, it’s frequency is supposed to increase with the speed of the car…apparently.

I bought an ( ex Golf ? ) relay for my 2000 TD5 Defender – have never seemed to get the wipers to do the intermittent thing properly though.

I’ve got a 1990 Land Rover Defender.

Modern? Land Rover Defender?

Haynes manual, relay number, Land Rover Dealer for part, fit, happy days.

It should be possible to obtain the appropriate relay from a scrappies and find a wiring diagram on the web.

My route to it in the SAAB 99 was to find the Diagram for a 90/900 in the Haynes manual (They three were essentially the same car with a bit of body work development) scratch my head for a bit trying to compare it to the 99 one and then give up and hit google.

This told me what to do with the intermittent stalk and relay I had from a 90, I then obtained an adjustable intermittent Wash Wipe from a Golf (which used Hella electrics) and just plugged it!

I can’t find the diagram I used in the end, but it should be possible to find a post that either has a diagram for a Landy or someone that can tell you what to do. The Landy probably has similarly simple electrics.

I’m sure it was something ridiculously simple like adding a wire from switch to relay for the intermittent and that was about it. By far the trickiest bit was bringing the relay under the dash rather than in the Engine bay so I didn’t have to cram any more wires through the grommet.

My Puma had an intermittent system where you flicked the wiper stalk down then back up, the time between dictated how long the delay was. My Octavia has a little switch on the top that controls the intermittent delay.

it’s frequency is supposed to increase with the speed of the car

I guess that’s why they control them via the ECU nowadays so they can do fancy tricks like that.

…Land Rover Dealer…

😯
First rule of owning a Land Rover; Never buy anything from a main dealer.

New ones are only about a tenner on ebay. I just thought for the sake of popping next door, I’d try to get a free one off a scrapper if someone had come up with a quick answer like “Ford still use them” or something like that.
I’ve found the fuse and relay boxes on a few of the cars, but nothing that looks like a wiper or flasher relay.
I guess if they became obsolete 15 years ago, and he’s got nothing older than 10 years, I’m not going to be in luck.

My ’96 Caldina (Toyota Carina in the UK) has one (with intermittent adjustable collar) so there must be on some older scrapheap-worthy cars 🙂

/edit – if you’re looking at 10 year or newer cars then I’m not so sure what you’ll find.

my 05 clio had one. it was loud! passenger footwell…

Is there not a vw relay that’s a popular with landrover users , gives you adjustable intermittent wipers ?

I too was confused by the Modern Car – 1990 Defender reference 🙂

Seriously though. Buy a NEW relay, from a factor or similar and google the fitting… Better still. google the fitting first.

Yep, VW 99 relay, look for VAG group stuff from 2000 and earlier, tall relay with 99 on the end.

All the rover cars (Actually, not sure about the 75/ZT) did.

Although thinking about it, the actual motor had 3 power tracks inside (I had to drill out the bolts, clean the excess grease and solder a new contact into mine when it died, as there were no rover carcasses to dig into), so if you have the stalk would you not just need the rover 25/zr motor instead – about a fiver from a scrappers.

My 1986 Land Rover 90 had only the three positions and only the wiring for them so when I cannibalised a Defeneder wash/wipe stalk and relay, I had to make up a supplementary harness to connect the stalk to the wiper motor. The nice folk at Autosparks did it for me for a few quid and it went into the dash alongside the old wiring.

One useful mod you can do while you’re at it is to replace the two single washer nozzle stalks with a pair of twin Defender nozzle stalks. The pump has more than enough power to squirt through four nozzles. It’s an easy job but you need narrow fingers to get to the backs of the stalks and remove then replace the little plastic nuts.

I decided I’d spent long enough trying to do this on the cheap, so went and bought a brand new relay for under a tenner.

Very helpfully, it’s got the terminals clearly marked on it.

Which match up nicely with this diagram.

That one mentions the VW relay too, but I’d just confuse myself if I tried to think about how long a wait I wanted between wipes while driving. A simple on/off suits me better.

globalti, I’ve already modified the washers. Mine had the even more basic single twin jet in the centre. I replaced it with a T connecter and two pipes running up to truck style twin jets mounted on the wiper arms themselves.

My td5 only has the one centre plastic nozzle with only one jet onto each side.
Next weeks project is to fit the wiper blade nozzles and maybe a heated washer fluid thing depending on what the mot man finds

I believe this is the part you are after