Hey all,

For the longest time, the intermittent wipers have not been working on my 1990 Nissan Maxima, and I finally decided to get them fixed. That being said, what do I need to replace, the windshield wiper relay or is there anything else I should be looking at?

Thanks in advance and happy holidays.

Do the wipers "park" properly when you use them on Low or High, or do you need to "dink" them into the retracted position manually?

The first two settings essentially turn them off, parking them at the bottom. Also, pulling the wiper stalk for wiper fluid does not make the wipers activate as well. The last two settings, low and high, work as usual from what I can tell.

It likely isn't the motor or the relay, then. I can take a look at the WD's tomorrow and make sure it isn't some fluky dual-relay setup, that's possible on something that old. I recall some of the old ones actually had a separate strobe timer, if yours is one of them then I'd bet on that.

Thanks a bunch. I'm hoping it'll be an easy fix!

Okay, I have to go by a '94 WD because that's as far back as ASIST goes with Maxima SM's, but I'm pretty sure your car will have a similar setup. There's a "Time Control Unit" that handles all the electrical timed-events, beepers, interior lights, etc, and the intermittent wipers. It gets signal from a potentiometer inside the combination switch. Since you didn't mention any other "timed events" malfunctioning, my bet is on a bad pot. If you backprobe the combo switch wiring, you should find one pin where the voltage moves up and down when you twiddle the intermittent control. If so, then chances are your Time Control Unit is dead (bad news because it's a discontinued part). If there's no movement, then chances are the combo switch is bad (better, because at least you have a prayer of finding one). Hope this helps.