Ducato wipers work when the ignition is turned on but not when the engine is running!

Roger, might have something for you. We run three Citroen Relays at work. Our oldest 2015 Relay has recently developed the same symptoms as you appear to have. Basically, in our case, the ignition switch has just become worn. When you twist the key to ignition, the engine starts but then the key does not quite rotate back to where it ought to rest and the wipers do not work. It took a short while to work out that you just have to click the key back a tiny turn yourself and all works as it ought to. I am busy and this is an easy fix once you get the hang of it but in our case I will look to replace the ignition switch as a next step. Hope that helps a little, good luck. PS I feel your pain with garages. We have been running commercial vehicles for 38 years now and have likely used as many mechanics! Bloody minefield. If you find a good one, hang one to them. Don't let it get you down, pay up, move on and learn from it, is my advice. Sometimes legal action is necessary in life but in my experience is that it is a long, drawn out affair that is rather expensive and can be stressful if you are that way inclined.
 
This is a bit similar to a car I worked on when I wor-a-lad working on cars. The car would start and run but only so long as the key was turned to the starter position. As soon as the key returned to the 'run' position the engine stopped. It didn't take long for me to work out as I was also an electronics engineer. It needed a new ignition switch assembly. To verify the OP's problem all that needs to be done is to check whether or not there is 12v at the wiper motor, and then progressively work back to the ignition switch. The garage that charged £980 to wrongly fit a new motor is utterly incompetent. The wiper motor worked perfectly well in the ign position, therefore it is a good wiper motor. That is even worse than the garages that just change a £500 item because "The Computer Says It Is Faulty". It's hardly ever 'the computer' but usually some £50 sensor or bad plug/socket connection. They change the £500 item and then go "oh dear, it wasn't that. I wonder" . . . .scratch chin . .. and give customer the £500 bill with the fault still in place.
 
I'm sure you're right! Try running the wipers on a vehicle while the ignition is turned on and the engine is not running. Then with the wipers still turned on start the engine. This temporarily stalls the wipers. I imagine that is a design feature so that the starter motor doesn't have to compete with the wiper motor for electricity.
 
davealpine said:
Roger, might have something for you. We run three Citroen Relays at work. Our oldest 2015 Relay has recently developed the same symptoms as you appear to have. Basically, in our case, the ignition switch has just become worn. When you twist the key to ignition, the engine starts but then the key does not quite rotate back to where it ought to rest and the wipers do not work. It took a short while to work out that you just have to click the key back a tiny turn yourself and all works as it ought to. I am busy and this is an easy fix once you get the hang of it but in our case I will look to replace the ignition switch as a next step. Hope that helps a little, good luck. PS I feel your pain with garages. We have been running commercial vehicles for 38 years now and have likely used as many mechanics! Bloody minefield. If you find a good one, hang one to them. Don't let it get you down, pay up, move on and learn from it, is my advice. Sometimes legal action is necessary in life but in my experience is that it is a long, drawn out affair that is rather expensive and can be stressful if you are that way inclined.
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I'm sure you're right that it's a faulty ignition switch ( see my reply to gasgas's post). I am going to try to get the £981 back from my credit card issuer under section 75 of the CCA 1974 but if that fails I'll probably take your advice and put it down to experience rather than take the Garage to the Court.
 
Seems nonsensical to me, just fit the wrong parts with no come back for the customer, around here if a garage orders parts and they are not the problem they go back and get restocked with a handling charge and resold as shop soiled.
 
Pudsey Bear said:
Seems nonsensical to me, just fit the wrong parts with no come back for the customer, around here if a garage orders parts and they are not the problem they go back and get restocked with a handling charge and resold as shop soiled.
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The 'part swapping ' approach to diagnosis has always been a problem in many fields. My dad was a TV and radio engineer when they first became household items and had the knowledge to diagnose faults and repair or replace accordingly. There would also be many so called "engineers' who didn't have a clue about electronics who carried around a suitcase full of various TV valves and would simply swap the valves in the defective TV one by one in the hope of fixing the issue , if not they'd make a call out charge and say the TV couldn't be fixed. A crafty practice and arguably dishonest. They were referred to as 'Valve Jockeys ' . Some things never change eh.
 
Roger Haworth said:
I'm sure you're right that it's a faulty ignition switch ( see my reply to gasgas's post). I am going to try to get the £981 back from my credit card issuer under section 75 of the CCA 1974 but if that fails I'll probably take your advice and put it down to experience rather than take the Garage to the Court.
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It is actually quite easy to take the garage to the Small Claims Court - but it probably wouldn't come to that anyway. I have done it on a couple of occasions, and won both times. You can be certain that you will win, what they have done is utter incompetence, it isn't 'well they did their best and it might have worked'. They did nothing to prove the part they changed was faulty before changing it. You can compare it to a builder who builds a wall which falls down the day after they have been paid.
All you do is this:
First write to the garage saying that if they don't refund the money you have paid them in full within a week you will take them to the Small Claims Court for charging for defective service - I think that is one of the specific reasons listed in the SCC web site. Inform them that once you start the SCC action you will be adding all the costs of going to court on top of your initial claim. That will include a day's lost earnings - which will apply even if you are retired, you can charge for inconvenience at the rate you used to get paid, plus of course your travelling expenses to court and the court fee.
Second, if they don't pay up, go on the internet and download the forms, pay the fee, I think from memory about £80 and you send one copy to the court and another to the garage.

Normally, (from experience) the garage will do one of three things, apart of course from not responding at all.
1) Refund you all the money they have charged you. You bank it and have some toast and marmalade.
2) Offer you a part refund. This will not be acceptable to you. You reply saying that is not acceptable, time is ticking and next Monday your claim goes to the court.
3) Refuse to offer you anything. You send the claim to the court.

What happens next is this:
You get a date for when the 'hearing' will be set, a few weeks from now. That's a posh term for you, the garage man and the 'judge' (- although he is judging the case he is not a robed, wigged figure sitting on a throne) to sit round a table in a reception room. This is not a TV court hearing, it's a medium sized room with plain carpet and furniture. The whole idea is that it is a simple, friendly atmosphere procedure, designed to be accessible to 'the man on the Clapham Omnibus'. Not with solicitors and a jury or anything. The garage proprietor will also get the invitation to attend. If he doesn't of course, he will lose by default of not being there and ordered to pay the original amount plus all your extensive costs plus the cost of going to court. If he doesn't pay up he is in contempt of court, a criminal offence I believe. They always do pay up by the way, because they are in the wrong.

The garage gets notice of the hearing. They either a) pay the full amount owing, and the case is dropped or b) attend court and lose, because obviously what they charged you for did not cure the fault. They are supposed to be Professionals and act in a Professional manner, i.e. to know what they are doing and to do the job accurately and professionally. They might do c) which is to offer you say 75% of what you are claiming, they might say well you have got a shiny new computerised wiper controller module. You may accept that, or you may reject it - you aren't going to lose this case in court after all, and a shiny new computerised wiper controller module isn't going to work any better than the one that was originally working properly so it's no benefit to have a new one.

If you go to court, you, the garage man and the 'judge' sit around a table and the judge asks you to explain what happened and why you are there claiming. You have already written this in your application but just repeat it calmly. The judge then asks the garage man to explain why he chose to change the module instead of firstly proving that it was faulty. What tests on the electrics did he do before changing the module? The garage man waffles and offers no coherent sequence of testing that he did. Meanwhile you keep your mouth shut. You let the garage man open his mouth and put his foot in it. He will condemn himself by showing his incompetence.
The judge finds in your favour and awards you compensation and all your fees and tells the garage to cough up. They may have 14 days to pay, I can't remember exactly.


I have done this a couple of times, once against a poncy stuck up man who ran his car into the back of my wife's -he refused to give us his insurance company details - and said to the judge "I don't see why I should pay to repair an old car". The judge asked me which repair quote I wanted to accept and I naturally accepted the most expensive, from the main agent franchised car dealer for that make. The poncy bloke harrumphed, took his cheque book out and wrote me a cheque for the full amount there and then. Case concluded.
Another case I took, similar to yours was that a supposed 'fully qualified' Mercedes Benz garage nearly destroyed my engine by cutting two glow plugs in half in the process of replacing a couple of other engine bits. Parts of the glow plugs were dropped into the combustion chambers, but fortunately blew themselves down the exhaust. The garage utterly failed to complete the job which I was left to do properly in my driveway at home. I issued a SCC claim against them and they refused to pay. The day for the judgement was approaching and the garage offered me half. I rejected it. They offered me 75%. I rejected that as well. The day before the judgement they offered me the full amount of the invoice that they had charged me. I took the pragmatic view that if I went to court I would only gain the £80 court fee, plus my expenses so I took the garage's offer of a full refund of the invoice.
 
If the parts remain with the vehicle can they demand them back? or only refund the cost of labour? as Roger has the benefit of the new parts regardless that they were not faulty in the first place.
 
Pudsey Bear said:
If the parts remain with the vehicle can they demand them back? or only refund the cost of labour? as Roger has the benefit of the new parts regardless that they were not faulty in the first place.
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I guess it depends on how the judge rules and what he thinks is fair and reasonable. If the garage/judge insisted on having the parts back it wouldn't bother me, just let them swap the original unit back in, job done.
 
We all need to go on a two week CANbus training course. Then buy ourselves a nice SnapOn £4500 diagnostic computer. Then we will be able to fix the faults ourselves without shelling out thousands of pounds to incompetent garages.
I wouldn't be surprised if there are CANbus training courses on youtube. I must take a look.

This is a good example of correct diagnosis from a lying analyser: My daughter's car had the engine light on. I plugged in my crappy £35 analyser and it said "Cam Position Sensor faulty". So I went on ebay and bought a new £85 cam position sensor. Deleted the alleged fault out of the car's computer, fitted the new position sensor, turned on the engine, drove down the road and lo and behold, the engine warning light came on. I took it to a garage on a farm and he said :" oh yes, it isn't the position sensor that's faulty, it is the chain tensioner that is stuck. This puts the cam position out because the chain isn't putting the cam where it should be. It's the V V T system that varies the cam position according to the throttle position". He fitted a new chain tensioner and all was fine. Thus he has my future custom.
 
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