Gerard, there are reasonably comprehensive instructions in the HT Shop Manual Supplement.

To answer your questions:

1/ I wouldn't have thought so. Not 100% sure on Preslite, but for Lucas they are just held in with a saddle clamp riveted to the motor housing, and good old fashioned magnetism. I hope you marked which way around they went, or you may have some fun on your hands getting the motor to rotate in the correct direction.

2/ N/A

3/ The armature bearings are sintered so don't use grease, just a soak in light oil such as sewing machine oil or compressor oil. Wipe off the excess before you put it together to keep it off the brushes.
You do need to use grease to hold the thrust ball and thrust cone on the armature for reassembly, unless you have a very small assistant.
The gearbox needs to be packed about 1/3 with a plastic compatible Lithium based grease, like Castrol Optitemp, or something else that complies with Holden LG2.

4/ Don't use emery for the commutator, as it's conductive. Use very fine glass paper.

5/ Make sure the thrust screw is retracted, the thrust plate and ball in place and try and figure out a way to retract the brushes so you can insert the commutator. It's fiddly unless you have fingers like spaghetti with an eyeball in the end of each one.


There is also post assembly adjustment information in the HT Supplement.

Edited by user Saturday, 17 October 2015 1:20:42 PM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

They are quite strong magnets, and clamped onto a fairly large surface area. The Lucas is difficult enough, but the extra depth of the Preslite makes it worse.
Good luck with it.

Gerard, the instructions are a little misleading, but the next part talks about earthing the wiper contact and testing. I suggest you forget about the torque measurements since you haven't replaced anything electrical. (I assume)
Connect the motor per the above picture. This is a picture of a Lucas plug as I don't have a Preslite to hand at the moment, but they should be the same, or very similar. Note that the terminals are marked inside the plug with Bat, SW1, SW2, and SW3.

1/ Connect the battery positive wire to either of the terminals shown, as they are connected together inside the motor housing. Don't connect it to the battery just yet.

2/ Connect the battery negative to the motor case.

3/ Connect one end of an additional wire, stripped by 3mm or less on one end and about 10mm on the other end to the motor case (with the 3mm end free), where you have connected the battery negative. If you don't have alligator clips or test leads, clothes pegs will work, or reinstall one of the mounting screws and clamp both wires under it. This wire will be used to simulate the operation of the wiper switch.

4/ Connect the positive wire from step 1/ to the battery +ve terminal. As you have noted, the motor will not run.

5/ Being sure to keep it clear of the battery positive connections, and keeping pinkies out of the way of the crank, touch the stripped end of the wire from step 3/ to terminal SW1. There will be a small spark, and the motor should operate at the lowest of its two speeds for as long as you leave the wire connected.

6/ Remove the wire from terminal SW1, allow the motor to stop, and touch it to terminal SW2. The motor should now operate at the higher of its two speeds.

7/ At some point in the above, check that the direction of rotation matches the arrow on the case. If it doesn't, check you have + and - around the right way on the battery and if all is well in the polarity stakes, you get to play musical magnets.

A couple of points.
-The crank is quite capable of munching up your fingers, so beware.

-If you must use a battery for your 12V source do try and arrange a 5 or 10A fuse in series with the positive lead in case of mishaps.

-With this simple test procedure the motor will not park itself in the same place every time, so when it is put in the car and the battery connected it will park itself, regardless of the wiper switch position, moving the wiper arms at a time you may not be anticipating. You might want to consider this.

- I notice there is a spot or burn mark on the outer contact, underneath the main drive gear. This is the park contact and it looks like there has been a recent mishap. The matching contact finger also looks blue, meaning it has been hot. It would be worth giving both a gentle polish with some fine glasspaper.

As far as the grease goes, the "1/3 full" bit means the third of the gearhousing where the worm and gear mate. As per your photo. It does no good anywhere else and is best not to get between the contact fingers and the sector ring under the main gear.

If you have access to a multimeter I can give you some other checks to do before powering it up.

Good luck.

Edited by user Tuesday, 20 October 2015 1:06:12 AM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

Gerard,

Glad to hear it. We'll have to get you onto one of the other image hosting sites. As much as I like your photographs, its a pain to keep track of which one I've opened!

There are three "covers", so called. There is a shaft cover, which is for Lucas only, a Gearbox cover, which is the gasketed metal plate on your Preslite, and a metal gearbox cover for Lucas which has no seal and no gasket.
I don't think you are missing anything.

The adjustment procedure involves removing all of the end float from the armature shaft and continuing to tighten the lash adjuster until the motor current increases, then backing it off a bit and sealing it with Loctite. Fairly agricultural, but effective. Since you haven't been pulling bearings out or replacing armatures and end thrust balls and seats it should be no different to when you pulled it apart. As it is a worm gear the end thrust in operation is in one direction only, so the armature shouldn't get slammed back and forth too much. Adjust it if you want, but I'd just pull the gear cover off and manually see how much end float the armature has first. More than 0.020" and I'd adjust it. Do you have facility to measure the motor current if need be?

For motor parking, basically what happens is this is controlled by the wiper switch contacts and the contact rotor under the main gear. The tang which has the burn mark on it is the park segment.
The motor has +12V connected to it as long as the vehicle ignition switch is on. When the switch is moved to low speed it earths SW1 and the motor now has current through it and starts. Ditto for high speed, except that the earth is removed from SW1 and applied to SW2. All of this is independent of the park contact.
When the motor is in motion, and the switch is selected to Off the switch connects SW1 to the centre segment of the contact rotor. The centre segment is earthed by inner segment, and the motor will continue to run until the park position is reached, and the notch in the inner segment aligns with its contact and removes the earth from the motor. At the same time the tang in in the outer segment aligns with its contact, and applies +12V to the end of the motor that was previously connected to earth.
Effectively, the motor is shorted out in the park position, which is a fairly extreme form of dynamic braking. The position of the segments on the contact rotor control where this position is reached, so it will be repeatable and the wiper blades will park in the same place each time.

The point of me typing all that crap is to show that to simulate all of that lot with bits of wire being removed and poked into plugs is not easy, so I suggest not worrying about it. You have proved that the motor runs on both speeds, and the park contacts and the contact rotor look fine. The usual reason the park position does not work is because of brush problems, in which case one speed does not work, or because one of the park contacts has broken off. This is normally a Lucas problem. It isn't for nothing that the alternative name for Lucas is "Prince of Darkness".

If you really, really, want to test it, I suggest you use the loom that was on the car and the real wiper switch. (I have a spare switch and a test harness I use to test them here, rather than lash it up with bits of wire.)

A few people here, including me, use Photobucket.
As a confirmed Dos/Windows person since the 1970s I regard Apple as the spawn of Satan, but I'm reliably informed that there is an iPhone app which runs on iPads for Photobucket.
Just be aware that any email address you give them when registering will be inundated with unsolicited offers of wedding tackle enhancement.

Terry, I understand your reluctance to initiate the debate. That's fine, since I already have.

Apples are wonderful things for some people. Ever cruised for chicks at a Genius Bar? I rest my case.


If only I could load a fact checker along with a spell checker, life would be grand, wouldn't it? It would certainly save me some typing.

At the risk of being chastised vociferously by Commodorenut for hijacking yet another thread, let me outline the timeline:

Ignoring a brief dalliance with FORTRAN,

Late 1970s would have been the dreaded Tandy TRS-80 (Trash 80) running basic, loaded by cassette tape, followed by a Z80 machine running CP/M with 2 x 8" floppy disks, each of a staggering 180K capacity. This machine was later upgraded with an enormous 10Mb Winchester hard disk about the size and mass of a Besser block, and its own 10 amp mains lead.

I wouldn't have had DOS until the 80's, but since early DOS was just hijacked CP/M I'm going to claim the 70s as valid. There was a tragic period of SCO Xenix amongst all that somewhere too.

Windows(Yuk!!)?
I've never used that version, only Windows 2.1, 3.0, 3.1, and 3.11 Windows for Workgroups plus the later versions.
Should you wish to experience the delights of one these versions, I have the original Windows 2.1 5-1/4" disks, and an unopened shrink wrapped version of Windows 3.11 + DOS I'd be willing to part with.

Since those versions of Windows were just pretty pictures on top of DOS, and DOS was a copy of CP/M due to the provenance I'm sticking with the 70's statement.

P.S. I never take anything here too seriously, particularly if I post it.

Sounds very much like we along similar career paths.

When I did my degree (Electr. Eng) in the early 70s, I worked in the electronics industry, firstly in 2-way communications & then the colour TV game, before stepping into automotive.

Back then at uni, we had a subject named 'Computer Science', which included Basic, Fortran & Cobol programming. The fun part was the "punch card" routine. It made you want run away from anything computer-based.

When personal computers first appeared, I dabbled with Z80 & TRS80 etc. along with a few other CP/M machines. Anyone remember the Microbee, the Sinclair or the Dick Smith Wizzard ?

The first real computer I came across was an early 128K Apple Mac, which ran MS Word & Lotus 123 etc. (program & files) all on a 400K 3.5 diskette. It had no hard disc, but worked very well, for 1985 anyway.

For one reason or another I've been an Apple Mac man ever since. We often joke at work about PCs being the 'Dark Side' etc. & debate either one's pros & cons. We never prove anything, but it's all good fun.

Dr Terry

Yes, those punch cards used to take 3-4 days, often for very simple computations.

I've never had the "pleasure" of owning a Commodore 64.

Dr Terry

Edited by user Thursday, 22 October 2015 2:30:44 PM(UTC)  | Reason: Spelling

No I didn't see those things, they were before my time, but we did see a lot of AWA TaxiPhones, Pye Leaders & Pye Victors & also another one made by Weston Communications.

Their biggest weaknesses were the crappy mini-watt valve socket contacts & asking all of those unsupported discreet components to remain alive while being bounced about on the Sydney's superb road network of the late 60s & early 70s.

All of these units were on either Lo-band or Hi-Band VHF mostly FM, but some Lo-Band were AM. None of them were very effective in Sydney's hilly terrain.

Dr Terry

Yes, I forgot about Vintens, there were also Plesseys. The other AWA unit that was gaining market share back then was their Carphone.

Yes, could pick-up, I was a little discreet about them being discrete !!

Dr Terry