I've been a lurker here since I bought my mini last year and I'm at a loss here. Little backstory 02 MC 5Speed, 135k Bought with a horrible miss fire and no power steering. I took it to the local Mini dealer and they replaced the power steering pump and cooling fan under the recall and I changed plugs/wires/could pack and resolved the miss fire and have been running trouble free for the past 8 months.
Last week in a rain storm the rubber on the wiper blades fell apart on me so I grabbed a replacement set of rainx blades from Walmart and swap them out.... This is where it gets weird.
Two days later I hop in the car to head to work, it's raining I start the car and hit the wipers and they do nothing!??! Fuses good, relays swapped around with the headlight relay in every possible configuration, switch is working fine (washer sprays and back wiper works fine)
I find the issue with the grounding and try varying wires to different points that I have cleaned down to metal with no luck, I purchased a ground strap and did the same, even going straight to the negative battery post and have no response from the wiper motor only a moderately loud clicking from the relays.
I noticed the motor was getting extremely warm to the touch during the tests.

Have I reached the end of the road for it being a grounding issue? I read somewhere that the MC may not allow the wipers to run if the hood is up?? Is this true? I have only tested with the hood up and have not been closing it between attempts.
Also I'm I wrong in thinking any bolt making contact to bare metal can be used for grounding it or does it have to be certain locations?

I figured I would ask before I purchase a replacement motor and swap it out, any insight or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!!

 

only other thing I'd do would be to remove the motor and do a bench test to verify it isn't a linkage thing .....

I once had wiper stop (on a Miata) and after much electrical checking did a lil digging and found something had found its way to the ONE place it could lodge and perfectly jam the linkage. Removed the trouble maker and problem resolved.

 

Did you shut the hood and try it?