I'm in the mood for a rant...

The past few days I've been driving to and from work along the A12, mostly in drizzle and road spray. In previous cars I'd just put the wipers on intermittent and pick an interval that did the job.

My present car has an 'automatic wiper' setting instead of 'timed intermittent' - what a waste of time that is! Instead of selecting an interval I now select 'sensitivity'. The actual effect is that the wipers work randomly, sometimes leaving the screen obscured by drizzle/spray, sometimes going full-time on a dry screen.

The only other choices are to switch the wipers to normal sweep, which is often too much wiping, or use the 'press for a sweep' every 5 seconds, which is distracting.

This car is a Focus, but I've had the same issues previously with a Golf Gti.

Has anyone EVER had these things working to their satisfaction?

Arghh!... and *breathe* - in... out... in... out... ah - that's better!

</end rant>

good rant.
On the subject of wipers / washers. My car (Fiat Seicento Sporting ) allows me to spray my front washers independantly of the wipers. This in my opinion is a god send. The number of other cars I have been in when you spray but are either frozen or empty and then the wipers just smear the screen. Now I can set my wipers how I like and spray when I like.
Older cars are great. The human brain is a better on-board computer than a silly car ECU.

Ive got a 306 with auto wipers and they are actaully dam good.

However spary covered roads are there weakness as you say, becuase while its fine if its wet enough or raining at the same time there not clever enough to be able to add water when need so it can end up just getting more and more bleary untill it goes flat out on a dry screen so I have to admit for winter spray conditions when its all full of salt i tend to go back to manually requesting each sweep and or some water (and accompanying three sweep).

Quite often you can put it on auto and then just manually pull it for water every 10miles or so. All just depends on the condition.

Most annoying thing for me is that while your doing all this your throwing buckets of neat -25 protected screenwash away because you can beg your left arm that if you drop down to a 50/50 mix it will be -15 and all turn solid the following day.

Good rant however!


Daniel

[Edited on 7/1/2011 by dhutch]

i get just as annoyed. its stupid, especially this time of year when you get dry salty stuff on the window and it goes to town smearing it. i haven't even got sensetivity on mine, just auto or on. it gets left off most of the time...

gets even worse when someone else is driving, the wipers come on when the windscreens completely dry and they don't realise its doing it, because 'the car takes care it it', no it doesn't! it knows f*ck all about what i can see!

[Edited on 7/1/11 by blakep82]

I'm with you David - modern cars seem to have gadgets which sometimes make no sense at all and just seem to be designed to annoy!

[Edited on 7-1-11 by RazMan]

Another pointless added extra is......

auto-dimming rear view mirrors.

Do you know why they are fitted? Because every bugger now has really bright, badly aligned headlamps. Or they all drive 4x4 with HIDs that are so high off the ground they light up the inside of my car.

I wouldn't mind if there was an intermittent option as well as the auto setting. I could live with that.

The other lazy-people option is automatic headlights - my car has that as well, but I rarely use it. Only last weekend I thought I was being flashed by the car behind me as I drove through an underpass, but I realised later that it was just the auto-headlights coming on. These are fine if you're touring on an Italian autoroute with hundreds of long dark tunnels, as then they make sense. In UK conditions - maybe not...

My auto-dimming mirror is the only gadget I do like!

[Edited on 7/1/11 by David Jenkins]

Tip for reducing spray - stay further behind the car i front :p

Obviously this doesn't stop the spray but reduces it alot until a bus or lorry comes the other way lol

My L200, yes a high 4x4 with HID (but proper self levelling) lights, but no interior rear veiw mirror, has speed sensitive wipers, so despite being set to intermitant, at anything over about 50 they just switch to constant, very annoying when the screen is not properly wet and the washers are frozen up!!!.

So much so I've got a squeezy bottle full of screenwash which I use to manually squirt the windscreen

[Edited on 7/1/11 by r1_pete]

Our old 306 had the auto-wipers - PITA as far as I'm concerned, they never reacted how you'd expect or want in any conditions. I made do with manually wiping as needed.

Now adjustable delay intermittent wipers are fabulous IMHO - you can set them just right for 99% of UK driving conditions.

quote:

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Originally posted by speedyxjs
Tip for reducing spray - stay further behind the car i front :p

Obviously this doesn't stop the spray but reduces it alot until a bus or lorry comes the other way lol

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Yep, good rant

We have a 308 and the damn things are either every 1 second (over 60mph) or every 2 seconds, that's it!

The other PITA is the fact they are designed for driving on the continent, i.e. LH-drive, so the final wipe is by the passenger side blade so it always leaves a streak across the driver's view

Feel better now

My 58 mondeo titanium had auto wipers - but it also had a manual intermittent setting...are you sure you're not missing a trick? Got to say I did tend to over-ride the auto setting an awful lot, though.

Current Beemer auto wipers appear to work just fine...not had to over-ride that yet 3 months down the line..

The wife has an 09 Focus - giving the screen a wash is fairly pointless, it washes the krud off lovely, then pauses around ten seconds till the screen has air dried itself, and puts in another wipe which creates the biggest skeet of slime across the screen.


Every time !


It has been driven all winter with a manky screen

quote:

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Originally posted by T66
The wife has an 09 Focus - giving the screen a wash is fairly pointless, it washes the krud off lovely, then pauses around ten seconds till the screen has air dried itself, and puts in another wipe which creates the biggest skeet of slime across the screen.

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quote:

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Originally posted by stevebubs

Current Beemer auto wipers appear to work just fine...not had to over-ride that yet 3 months down the line..

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quote:

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Originally posted by Jasper

quote:

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Originally posted by stevebubs

Current Beemer auto wipers appear to work just fine...not had to over-ride that yet 3 months down the line..

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Yeah - good old German engineering, my Beemers auto wipers are superb, as are the auto lights and rear view mirror. And along with the cruise control and auto box I just sit there and point it in the right direction

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Got them on my Pug 406 and they're crap.
Would love to find a way to convert them to intermittent.

The other thing that annoys me is every time I get in the s0dding climate
control switches itself to "Auto"

I have 06 mondeo, brilliant. just adjust the sensitivity and it always seems to work fine.

That extra wipe is to get the last little bits of water off that normal systems leave on the screen. I've never had any issues with it doing it on mine. I have blade wipers fitted to mine which are much better than the original type of wipers.

Auto dimming mirror too, which is great because i've never been blinded by anything.

Moaning for the sake of moaning i think

I weirdly hate wipers in general. I don't have auto wipers but most of the time I think the speeds are wrong so I often do it completely manually in drizzel and light rain unless I feel it's unsafe to do so.

My car also does that stupid thing where it does two wipes when you spray the screen, one to clear the much then one to scrape all the crud on the wipers back over the screen, I had quite a problem with this coming back from christmas as the car had been sat for four days in which time it had been snowed on and all melted leaving alot of dirt on the blades, which I only found out on the M4 when I tried to clean of Spray from passing a lorry, as it wasn't raining it just meant I had to drive to the next services and clean the blades (I should have done before I left I suppose but It's not something I've ever had a problem with before.)

I dislike most of the automated functions on these kind of things (I really don't like self cancelling indicators), the only one of these I do like is how on modern cars the lights turn off when you turn off the engine.

quote:

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Originally posted by Ben_Copeland
Moaning for the sake of moaning i think

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The car manufacturers have yet to implement the best auto function.

The one that detects "lack of fog" and turns off the front fog lights.


Paul G

I like that Idea. Surely that one must be possible.

My Audi works awesomely!

The sensitivity switch for auto is also the delay adjust when in intermittent...

quote:

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Originally posted by 907
The car manufacturers have yet to implement the best auto function.

The one that detects "lack of fog" and turns off the front fog lights.


Paul G

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