What Did You Do With Your Kizashi Today?

[Woodie]

Also need to take the wiper motor out and figure out why it won't park automatically. That used to be a contact disk and wiper inside the wiper gearbox back in the day, but who knows how they do it now? Figured I'd pop it open and give it a whirl before I splash out the big bucks it's probably going to cost for a replacement.

Took it all apart, found nothing wrong, and put it all back together. The only thing I accomplished was to give the area below the cowl vents a very good cleaning. I tried checking voltages and came away very confused. I disconnected the wires going to the wiper motor, turned on the switch and couldn't find 12 volts anywhere. I expected to find 12 volts at all times on one pin (for the park feature) and 12 volts on two other pins when the switch was in low or high speed settings. I now don't understand how this thing works at all. Is it something to do with CANBUS? Looked in the service manual and didn't find a wiring diagram of the wiper circuit. I've only got the service manual going up to "G", maybe there are better descriptions in a section called "Troubleshooting"?

[Ronzuki]

Stalk Control Switch assembly, or, interposing relay(s) if there are any. Those are the mechanical wear items in a wiper system that get used and abused so to speak (lots of cycling). TJ Wranglers go through lights and wiper stalk controls quite often...they're rather 'junky' as far as build quality goes. I'd be looking at those items as well. I suspect the stalk controls are inputs to the Body Control Module which then operates the wipers. Nothing is simple and straight forward anymore.

Daughter calls me last night and says she jumped in her 2016 RAV4 to go home after work and out of know where, after she fires it up the CEL and AWD lights are both lit, and, the back-up camera doesn't come on in reverse. Car runs/drives normally according to her. Now tell me, how in the hell are those three things all related to one another? Fuse is all I could imagine. We'll see what the dealer's diag comes back with today.

Update: So what DO all 3 have in common? Transmission Control Module software...cool code dude. 10 months on the road, nearly 7k miles and all of a sudden the 'software' pukes having trouble realizing she put the damn thing in reverse? Really? Point of the rant is: just because your wipers, or anything else, is malfunctioning or acting unusual in your modern-day techno-chariot, doesn't mean there's actually something physically wrong with it.

[Woodie]

Stalk Control Switch assembly, or, interposing relay(s) if there are any. Those are the mechanical wear items in a wiper system that get used and abused so to speak (lots of cycling). TJ Wranglers go through lights and wiper stalk controls quite often...they're rather 'junky' as far as build quality goes. I'd be looking at those items as well. I suspect the stalk controls are inputs to the Body Control Module which then operates the wipers. Nothing is simple and straight forward anymore.

That was my realization after I got a better version of the service manual and did some studying. The stalk controls just go into the BCM. No way to tell what's going on in there. The BCM controls two relays that feed the wiper motor in a very inexplicable way. I swapped the wiper fuse in the under dash fusebox with something else that uses 15 amp, and I swapped the two wiper relays in the under hood fusebox. Didn't make any difference. So here I am, a guy who has been fixing cars for 45 years, and fixing office machines with very similar circuits for 40 years, and I'm at a standstill because the manual was written for parts replacing monkeys rather than people who actually understand troubleshooting. If I had a book that actually explained the system and told me what voltages should be on what pins I'd know what to do. I'm fairly certain that if I take it to a dealer, I'm going to be paying for a wiper motor first, and then paying for troubleshooting time after that doesn't fix it.

As you said:

[Ronzuki]

I really hate that I'm even typing this, but....wipers are a technically a safety related item. Maybe try nicely playing the safety card with ASMC before you go to service center. Try opening a case with ASMC first before you go. You could possibly cajole them in to having the service center investigate the issue free of charge (ASMC pays their bill)...in the name of safety. Worth a try.

On a side note regarding the RAV4, their initial a.m. 'TCM software' diag was apparently BS. Her p.m. call to the dealer indicated they don't know why the CEL and AWD lights are on in her car and something fried the backup camera, or its fuse, she's not sure which. Backup camera is now operational, however, idiot lights are still on. There was some kind of surge in that car all of a sudden when she started it or directly thereafter. She had not plugged anything in to any outlets or receptacles, so that wasn't the cause. She's in a loaner for the duration.

[n8dogg]

Drove to Winthrop, WA over the weekend for their balloon festival in the Kizashi. In the evening, several of the balloons are inflated in the middle of downtown just for show.
The next morning, the balloons were to launch from a nearby field but was cancelled due to an un-forecasted snow event.
download/file.php?mode=view&id=3702
download/file.php?mode=view&id=3701

[KuroNekko]

Drove to Winthrop, WA over the weekend for their balloon festival in the Kizashi. In the evening, several of the balloons are inflated in the middle of downtown just for show.
The next morning, the balloons were to launch from a nearby field but was cancelled due to an un-forecasted snow event.
download/file.php?mode=view&id=3702
download/file.php?mode=view&id=3701

It's been an oddly dry winter in the Mid-Atlantic. I don't think it snowed more than half a centimeter and that was just one day. It's been very warm for a winter. Motorcyclists are coming out and riding and I also got my rear tire replaced on my Suzuki SV so it's good to go.

[DiggerDerrik]

Actually that was a quite dismissive statement, I should have been more clear in that for what I value when shopping for tires they're not great. When they came up the page was sorted according to price and they were the cheapest of 77. That's not a good sign, but it's entirely possible that they're just overstocked on them and the price is artificially low right now. I saw that and the 400 UTQG rating and called them crap. I consider 400 to be the cutoff point for tires, anything above that I will not consider. My main concerns are wet and dry traction, I ignore any tire which brags about how long it lasts because that usually means it is too hard to give decent wet traction and braking.

I need to reminded from time to time that I'm not the only person in the world and that sometimes others have different, yet perfectly valid opinions. Sorry.

Sorry if I came off like a douche in my reply. I wasn't sure if you were trolling or not. I knew when I put that post up I shoulda left the brand out of it. I kept it in in case it helped someone save a few dollars on a new set.

I know the Fuzions aren't gonna be a superb tire but they're going on a car that has 112,000 miles. I wasn't in the mood to spend much more then I did on a new set.

I don't look into all the ratings when I buy tires. I look at the price, the mileage rating and try to stick to companies I've heard of before. The car drives me on I-5 from Tacoma to Seattle everyday. I rarely go over 75mph. No need for a high performance tire. The only frequent complaints I saw on the Fuzion was road noise. The goodyears I have now have been noisy so I doubt the new ones will be worse.

FedEx delivered them today and I set up an appointment Saturday to have them mounted. So I'll soon see.

[Ronzuki]

That was my realization after I got a better version of the service manual and did some studying. The stalk controls just go into the BCM. No way to tell what's going on in there. The BCM controls two relays that feed the wiper motor in a very inexplicable way. I swapped the wiper fuse in the under dash fusebox with something else that uses 15 amp, and I swapped the two wiper relays in the under hood fusebox. Didn't make any difference. So here I am, a guy who has been fixing cars for 45 years, and fixing office machines with very similar circuits for 40 years, and I'm at a standstill because the manual was written for parts replacing monkeys rather than people who actually understand troubleshooting. If I had a book that actually explained the system and told me what voltages should be on what pins I'd know what to do. I'm fairly certain that if I take it to a dealer, I'm going to be paying for a wiper motor first, and then paying for troubleshooting time after that doesn't fix it.

Woodie, any progress on this?

[Woodie]

Spent some more time deciphering the wiring diagram and now I see how it's supposed to work, although I can't figure out for the life of my why anyone would do it that way. I'm pretty sure it's inside the wiper motor, I looked in there but can't get to the offending part without a good probability of breaking it. Pretty sure I can verify that with multimeter measurements but that's going to require disassembling the cowl area again and a helper. I'll do that when my girlfriend is here and the weather is nice. replacement wiper motor is $400 from Suzuki but a bunch of junkyards have them for $80 - 90.

Meanwhile, the wipers work fine, it's just an annoyance to have to park them by bumping the switch repeatedly when they finish.

[Speed_Racer]

Not sure if I mentioned this issue a few years back - when the power company dropped a tool on my roof/window.
But I found that water was leaking in when it rained or during car washes. So I had it taken back to the body shop and they pulled the rear window and resealed it again. Not sure what happened but I have a faint stain on my headliner now, so that's not great.