Wipers not 'parking' and door locks not working

[fuel]

Hey guys, thought I would put up my first 'help me' thread.

I have a '97 406 2.0 auto sedan (originally sold new in Japan and imported here to NZ as a used car) which has a couple of small niggly faults.

First issue is the windscreen wipers don't 'park' back into their bottom position once you turn the wipers off, they will turn off immediately when and where you turn the wipers off on the stalk - this is for all modes, ie mist, intermittent and full speeds.

Next issue is the door locks don't want to budge on all doors except the rear left door. On the affected doors you cannot move the lock/unlock lever at all nor can you lock/unlock the front doors from the key on the outside - the key moves in both directions but just simply does nothing, you can feel a bit of a click but you can feel that it just isn't really actuating anything inside.


Cheers guys!

[steve_earwig]

Hmm, wipers could be the park position switch inside the wiper box or the switch.

If the locks don't move at all perhaps they're seized...

[maxxymilian]

The problem with the wipers is an easy fix, open the relay which controls the wipers and find the "cold solder" that is your problem. Usually it is one and the same for every 406.

[fuel]

thanks for that mate where is the wiper relay located? I can't for the life of me find it!

this is the fuse box behind the cover above the driver's side right knee:



and under and behind that lot of uses, with the fabric card removed is this bunch of relays looking upwards:



except that none of these are wiper relays, the white one in the left hand upper corner is actually a capacitor/suppressor of some kind, while the larger yellow relay in the middle is the rear windscreen demister relay, and with the other two smaller relays unplugged nothing changes, I can't figure out what those smaller relays are for.

And under the bonnet in the fuse box there is one single purple relay, again with it unplugged nothing seems to change - everything seems to still work:



there is a spot for a relay below the purple relay but it has no wires leading to it from underneath, and the spot for a relay on the left hand side only has two or three small thin wires going to it.

I should note I have found a replacement wiper motor and fitted it and nothing changed also - the wiper motor was working perfectly fine with self parking from the donor car.

This car is driving me insane! Help!

[fuel]

Ok I found the wiper relay, it was actually behind the fuse panel in the passenger compartment - you have to pull that red tab out to remove it. It's seriously like trying to put your fingers through a mailbox slot to access the wiper relay, it's so bad I'm not even bothering clipping the socket back into its place because it's so hard to do, I'm just going to leave it dangling.

And yep, it did have not one but three cold solder joints which I touched up with the soldering iron and it all works again! Hooray!

Thanks to all who have helped! The door lock fault is fixed too, it just appears to be a loose or dodgy wiring harness connector to the drivers side door actuator.

[norky75]

Hi i'm having exactly same problems wipers not working and central locking not working these must be linked as when one goes down the other does too , i'm trying to locate the relay for the wipers but with no joy u stated its behind the fuse panel in the passenger compartment ? only thing i can see there is the heater motor ,or did u mean under bonnet fuses? cheers

[steve_earwig]

There should be a few relays above the passenger compartment fuse panel but I have a feeling the wiper relay is in the BSI on yours