Looking into the possibility of using cable driven electric windshield wipers as found in many english cars. Believe made by Lucas maybe Bosch or both. Since my old British cars all were positive ground was there ever a switch to negative ground, And if so when (year wise) did this happen. And if there was a switch which cars would be equipped with not only cable driven wiper motors and V-8s ? And if not does anyone know if and how polarity can be switched for both items ?
On old Ford cars, when the switch is made from 6 volt + ground to 12 V _ ground, the motors are not affected. The important thing is, good grounds, and the proper voltage drops.
Did a quick search. Not sure what ground they use but Land Rover and Rover 3500 have v8s and cable drive wipers. There is also a company that makes kits to fit them to replicas, Specialty Power Windows. Also corvettes used cable drive until 62(?)
Most British Leyland cars 70,s 80's had these 12v cable drive set ups the most common being the "cl***ic " or original Mini, I'm sure that these can be found new from Mini spe******ts, or from kit car parts suppliers such as, Car Builder Solutions. http://www.cbsonline.co.uk/category/Windscreen_Wash___Wipe,b.html or even the uk's own evil bay.
As long as it's a 12v motor you should be fine. My Vauxhall was swapped to negative ground and the wiper motor was fine. Granted it's a Delco wiper motor..
Another recommendation for the Cl***ic BMC Mini wiper set up. Cable drive so can be mounted where you like and then trim the cable to suit. Lots of British Rods use this set up, and you set them up so they 'clap hands' or follow each other across the screen. P.
Polarity isn't an issue and generally thet are Lucas parts used from the late 30' onwards , there was a two speed version with self park which does need modifying for polarity change but its pretty rare
I did a recent tech article rebuilding one of these systems. Like said already, polarity is no issue.
Not British, but I do know that MGBs changed over to negative earth in the late 60s through the end of production(1980). My 69 MGC and every MGB I have owned newer than the "C" was negative earth.
My Morris Traveler has cable drive and I simply modified it to accept a 12 volt GM wiper motor. Not sure what difference a v8 would make to this discussion.
There were negative ground British cars, but I don't know when that happened. Most likely that would vary from one kind of car to another. There is more than one way to configure an electric motor. Some are polarity sensitive, others not. I have never tried to run a British wiper motor with reversed polarity, but apparently others have. Even if the motor did rotate backwards, that would only matter if your unit was self-parking. Many of the earlier cars lacked that feature and you had to manually switch off the wipers at just the right time to park them.
If you use a Lucas set up you can wire it with + or - ground it will only work intermently either way.
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