Dipped beams = too bright , auto wipers = arghh, rear saloon wipers = ?!?!

The purple shift is annoying, seeing them glisten in the rear view mirror out the corner of your eye it almost looks like flashing blues :o
 
mrk said:
The purple shift is annoying, seeing them glisten in the rear view mirror out the corner of your eye it almost looks like flashing blues :o
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Ive noticed that too. Its particularly unsettling when you are going 170MPH past a primary school. You feel sure your life is over.
 
The problem is the SUV headlights are mounted higher and so they will inevitably be in other lower cars line of sight. Unless they are pointed lower which will give them very short range. They must pass an mot so it is a little suspicious. Another dieselgate? :p
 
ttaskmaster said:
On the fleet vehicles with these fitted, you turn up the sensitivity lever from 0-3. That basically decides when it activates the wipers in heavy, medium or light rain. The wipers come on at normal speed. If you don't want them on, switch it to 0.
You have manual control between single wipe, off, intermittent, normal and fast.
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It sounds like they're just regular wipers with variable intermittent speed.
 
[TW]Fox;30377454 said:
Can you clarify what feature you are actually talking about?
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Automatic High Beam Off, at that point. Call it what you like - I'm talking about the headlights that are supposed to detect oncoming vehicles and auto-switch to dipped beam.

Those combined with mis-aimed headlights are what I get the most problems with.

MORE SPEED said:
They don't. I suspect the wipers in the astravan work very similar to other auto wipers on the market, but he doesn't know how to use them, i.e. set headlights to Auto and wipers on intermittent.
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It is literally as described. One slider on top of the arm controls sensitivity. Position 0 is off. 1 is heavy rain, 2 is average, 3 is light mist. The higher the sensitivity, the sooner it comes on.
You set this to which one you want triggering the auto-wipers and they will just come on as set, wiping at regular speed. Auto-wipe will come on even if you don't set the manual switch on the main arm to anything.
That is what we're shown, that is how they behave - If I'm doing something wrong, then the cars are all broken in the exact same way and still don't work like you say they should.

[TW]Fox;30377531 said:
Turns out he is talking rubbish, from the Vauxhall Astra owners manual
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If you say so - The car is clearly as uninformed as me then, or the guys at BT Fleet who showed us exactly how it worked when we all got our vehicles...
Maybe they're aftermarket - I don't know, but they certainly exist on these things and they're certainly pointless crap!
 
Regarding auto-wipers, my wife's car has them and most of the time they seem OK however when there is a fine drizzle sometimes the screen starts accumulating droplets/haze without them activating.

I don't consider it the end of the world however, as you can manually activate and are no worse off than if you didn't have them in the first place.
 
The worst thing about auto wipers is when your engine is running and you are scraping ice / snow off the windscreen, you can end up with a cold surprise thrown into your face haha.
 
Jamesyboyjim said:
The worst thing about auto wipers is when your engine is running and you are scraping ice / snow off the windscreen, you can end up with a cold surprise thrown into your face haha.
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I had it with the mazda which has always auto-on wipers so no need to activate it like on the BMW.

sprayed some window cleaner on while engine was running and got splashed right in the face with it, not the nicest of tastes :o that was a cheap halfords window cleaner wonder if auto glym tastes any better.
 
Jamesyboyjim said:
The worst thing about auto wipers is when your engine is running and you are scraping ice / snow off the windscreen, you can end up with a cold surprise thrown into your face haha.
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Can't say that's ever been a problem as you shouldn't leave an engine to warm up stationary anyway. I scraped the sensor clear first then do the rest of the screen, never had it go off on me.
 
paradigm said:
Can't say that's ever been a problem as you shouldn't leave an engine to warm up stationary anyway. I scraped the sensor clear first then do the rest of the screen, never had it go off on me.
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The window is steamed up until it gets warmer and I'll be damned if I'm getting into a cold car :p

But on a more serious note, why not?
 
grudas said:
I had it with the mazda which has always auto-on wipers so no need to activate it like on the BMW.

sprayed some window cleaner on while engine was running and got splashed right in the face with it, not the nicest of tastes :o that was a cheap halfords window cleaner wonder if auto glym tastes any better.
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bmw system not so stupid then? :p :D
 
grudas said:
It's different.

mazda simply goes - auto wipers? -> sense rain/water -> on
bmw requires you to manually flick the sensitivity or stalk to first activate the wipers and then it manages the speed/turns them off.
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so it doesn't splash you in the face when you least expect it, because you have to turn it on.
 
Jamesyboyjim said:
But on a more serious note, why not?
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Well I'm no expert, but I'd imagine it takes longer to warm up the oil and get the oil pressure up, putting it under light load will speed this process up exponentially. So the time you have the engine running stationary, especially during cold days, the engine is less protected, and potentially for longer.
 
OllyM said:
What would you do if you had a modern Mercedes then? :confused:

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Turn it one click to the left, obvs....
 
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