window washer

[flomulgator]

kind of a funky place to ask but here goes:

Window washer crapped out just in time for winter. Found a wire going into the stalk that had frayed badly so I repaired that but it didn't fix. My cruise was failing too so I guess that was that. Pulled the washer bottle and pulled the plug out the back, rammed in a electrical tester to the socket. To my surprise it was registering minus 9 volts constant, occasionally dropping. I say minus because I sure had red to red. When I fired the washer switch it would spike from 9 or whatever slow falling number up to 11.5.

So I'm pretty surprised by this, what the hell is going on? That does not seem like normal operation. If that was normal I would just conclude washer motor busted (hey it looks rusty to boot) but now I'm guessing electrical gremlin?

[JohnC]

Do the test again. There is no source of any negative voltage with respect to ground.

[flomulgator]

Well I flipped them just to make sure and I was getting a positive reading with + on white and - on red. My statement was predicated on the obvious association that red wire = positive and that white had to be negative. Even read as a positive voltage it's still weird that there is a constant 9 volts, right? And that it will start slowly falling occasionally too.

[JohnC]

What do those wires connect to? Are you sure you're not probing the fluid level sensor?

GM typically uses black for ground, not white.