I bought a variable wiper switch for my 98 to swap for the old switch. After the install, the new switch works, but not the variable controls, just the off, low, and high that I had with the old switch.

Does anyone know what I can do to get the variable functionality?

 

It should be a direct swap.

The intermittent wipers go through the BCM, I suppose there's a possibility of the BCM not being 'programmed' for it.

 

Sorry for the newbie question, but what's the BCM?

 

From search:

 

There are BCM's that include keyless entry feature and those that don't. It's possible that the variable wipers are a BCM option. If the car has the keyless entry feature then I would expect that variable wiper feature would be included. If the car does not have keyless entry than there is a very good chance it does not include the variable wiper feature.

 

mine does not have the securities package and I swapped a variable wiper in and it works fine but it is a tad slow though

 

In that case the OP's BCM should be OK, unless the intermittent wiper circuit of the BCM is damaged, but that seems unlikely.

Is it possible he picked up a defective intermittent wiper switch. Is the switch brand new?

Otherwise you probably need the FSM wiring diagrams for the wiper switch, an ohmeter and someone who knows how to use them to determine the cause of the problem.

 

Did you use the correct year switch, I believe the pin-out changes at about 97.
http://www.vqpower.com/v2/articles.php?article_id=42

 

You got that right, according to the wiring diagrams a switch from a 96 will not work on a 97 or newer. So this is most likely the cause. You can make the older switch work by running the solid purple wire to pin 24 of the BCM and the brown with white stripe wire to pin 33 of the BCM. Use pmohrs link to the FSM's to see the difference.