Could not turn off the wipers yesterday, finally had to pull the fuse. Any idea whether this is the switch or motor? How difficult is it to replace either?

 

The only way to find out is to do a process of elimination. I had to swap out the wiper motor from my old Civic with one from an Integra. I didn't have the same problem though. My old motor seemed slow in operation.

 

Does this happen only when the headlights are on?

 

NO, they are on all the time. (Its a 98 Civic LX)

 

This will sound crazy, but when I had a wreck in my EM1 the repair shop who repaired my front end damage did not connect a ground on the car properly and it was loose... I was like huh a loose ground will make my wipers come on and off ; Well I took it back in to them and sure enough they found it and it hasn't happened since ; My loose ground was located near the driver's side fender inside the engine bay...

 

^ Very possible. Have seen a similar issue.

 

Somehow, I would suspect if it was a loose ground the wiper would uperate intermittenly. I checked the various grounds all seem to be ok. I was trying to remove the switch but don't know how the steering column cover is held together. Its held by 3 screws, but then the upper and lower need to be seperated. I don't want to break them, whats the trick?

 

i laughed hard when read the tittle on this thread lol .

 

i had this same problem. check the fuse to see if its bad. in my situation i just changed my fuse and it corrected the problem.

 

yeah i was gunna say check that fuse out bro

 

Makes no sense, if fuse was bad, wipers would not run at all. I removed fuse to stop them from running.

 

Just curious where you were taking this idea. I have heard of various electrical problems in which having the headlights ON affects seemingly unrelated circuits.

 

There was an accord that I saw with wipers that would NOT turn off unless you turned off the headlights. The left turn signal also just stayed lit. When I unplugged the left headlight, the wipers turned off, and the turn signal worked as it should.

I believe that the headlight was "stealing" it's ground through other circuits. I didn't actually get a chance to diagnose.