Novice needs volts/amp advice

How many hundreds of cold cranking amps does a car battery provide?? He wants to power the windshield wiper motor with a low current AC/DC power supply. He said "it looks like" it pulls 6A when powered from a motorcycle battery. Did he look to the left side or the right side? Did his current meter drop 3V?

The original poster's measured current draw sounds right on the money, according to these links. A running current of 5 amps seems reasonable but the starting current and stall current will be a lot higher than that. The first link has a lot of good information.

**broken link removed**

Wiper Motor Current Draw - Society of Robotics

One solution to powering the motor would be an X-Box power supply which can often be found at thrift stores for a few bucks. These beasties will supply 14 amps and some models even 16 amps! Here's a link to my efforts to figure out how to use these guys. In addition to the main 12v supply, there's also a low current 5v supply and a control wire that must be connected to 5v to turn the 12v output on. This may be useful for your app, as a low power switch or a microcontroller could be used to control the 12v output.

X-Box Power Supply - 12 Volts @ 14 Amps!

If you look at the fuse in ANY motor vehicle, the wiper motor will be 20 / 30 amp... BUT!! that is for extreme load eg dry windscreen drag..

I do agree that the larger capacity PS will give you the results you need... The problem here is.. How much would you pay for a decent Power supply.
I would go for a 15A supply... If the motor is old and tired, the starting current will be even higher..

Well, as I posted above, I would pay ~US$5.99 for a 14 - 16 amp XBOX power supply at a thrift store. These things are very common, and the few I have purchased at thrift stores have all worked perfectly. One of the links I posted by people who do all sorts of wonderous things with wiper motors even suggests this exact solution.

I doubt the original poster will be back anyway, with so many people telling him that this can't be done despite many examples otherwise.