Thread: Wiper Motor Power Supply

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I`ve been fighting with an old Dell mod. # 5141-2d power supply for two days now with very little luck. It will run my wiper motor when I test it but once I disconnect the wires to reconnect them more permanently, it shuts down. I tried a 4.5v 1000mA wall wart and it was too slow and had no torque. Then I tried a 12v 800mA wall wart and it worked somewhat better but still weak.
My question is ..... has anyone tried an HO train transformer? I found some on ebay with variable voltage and up to 2 amps. Just wondering if they will with a wiper motor?
Thanx

I have used a 12V battery charger to power my wiper motor powered grave grabber, 12 VDC @ 2 amp works great and is not too fast, 12VDC @ 4 amp its too fast, more torque but it does not need a lot of power.

Monster Guts sells wiper motor power supplies that are nice and simple to hook up as well as cheap. They are offline till like Monday though.

http://monsterguts.com

A windshield wiper motor is designed to handle a pretty decent load. A car battery is rated in amp hours. So when you are dealing with this motor, it is amps you need. You can control the speed with voltage. IE the older cars used to have a variable resistor to change the speed of the wipers. This was before the new intermittent control.

You could use a motorcycle battery. Fully charged one would likely have ample amp hours to run your prop all night, plus it would be portable. The problem with warts is they are limited in there abilty to deal with load. Batteries can give more punch.

Spinman

Thanks for the heads up! We are already planning our 2009 Haunt...lol