I had my clockspring changed by the dealer and they replaced my manual wiper clockspring with a clockspring that has a automatic function on it (accidentally!? I have no idea). I do have the rain sensor on the windshield which controls the variable speed of the manual wipers. The "new" feature seems that it is working but there is no way I can tell if it is on or off as there is no indicator in the cluster and if you go to the menus there is no way to adjust the sensitivity of the sensor. I do like the manual operation of the previous wipers and the fact that it has variable speed. I need it to rain for 2 days for me to test it out but I am in the fence of getting it replaced to the manual wiper stalk if I cannot see if it is on or off or if I cannot control the sensitivity. In a way it is like a half-baked retrofit. It would drive me crazy everytime it rains and I will have to use the wipers blindly to find the correct setting.

What do you guys think? Ask them to put the proper part and reprogram it again as per factory specs or is there a way to get the wiper indicator and sensor sensitivity to show up in the menu? Car is a 2007 justa.

 

That statement doesn't make sense. The manual wiper settings do not have variable speed. Please read your Owners Manual carefully about operation of the wipers.

In summary:

• Position 0: wipers off
• Position 1: either one-speed intermittent wipe (if the car has no sensor), or auto variable speed wipe controlled by the sensor
• Position 2: continuous low speed (sensor has no effect)
• Position 3: continuous high speed (sensor has no effect)

One thing to note is that is that auto wipers are reset every time you turn off the car. When you turn on the car again, auto wipers will not be active again until you flip the wiper switch back to position 0 and then to position 1. BMW did not want wipers to start up unexpectedly on their own.

 

Yes I do have a rain sensor and yes I do have manual wipers and position 1 does indeed makes my wipers auto variable speed wipe before the clockspring replacement. What I do not have before is the button on the tip of the wiper stalk to activate the automatic wiper function which right now I have with the new clockspring. Another problem is that I do not have any indicator in the dash if it is on or not if I press the button plus the fact that I cannot adjust the sensitivity from the menu. So if it is raining and I turned it on drive around town and decided to go to a car wash how the hell will I know if it is on or off until I go inside the car wash and break my wipers. On my other cars there is a indicator and on the new minis the wiper stalk has a light on it and a indicator in the dash when it is turned on but in my case push it and you have no clue if you did engaged it or not.

It is weird in a way that my car came with a rain sensor BUT only has a manual wiper stalk and it works wonderful as I do not go beyond position 1. The question is do I need to keep the new feature even though I cannot use it properly or revert back to the manual wiper stalk which means the dealer needs to replace the clock spring again with the right one that is similar to what my car came with from the factory.

 

Try the button on the end of the stalk

 

I just did and it behaves differently. Somehow the sensitivity is different and I have to manually pull the stalk down to do a manual wipe than just leaving it in auto mode. The pain is that I cannot adjust the sensitivity of the sensor which before the sensitivity is fine until they replaced the stalk and coded it in with the car.