Recently bought 07 Mini S. Anybody out there have my problem of useless intermittent wipers? They are only intermittent at a complete stop. As soon as start to roll they're back to full time. Checked with the Mini agency and after some time they said yes, that's how they are with "automatic (I think) System". It doesn't have a rain sensor. If this is true it's gotta be one of those "What were they thinking" kind of things. So far this is my main complaint. Plenty of pick up, great handling, good gas milage, lots of fun. Gas milage indication a bit optimistic. If I can believe the odometer I figure I've been getting about 31 MPG when it says something like 34.

 

I take it this is a 2nd gen car. Someone came forth with this issue before, and it seems like somewhere in the owner's manual it said how to set it up correctly.

 

Hmmm. Sounds like you have them in the low speed position (one push upward - toward roof). What you describe is how they're supposed to act in low. Intermittent wipe is activated by pushing in on the button on the end of the same wiper stalk. Yes, it pushes in just like the one for the computer. Try that. Oh, and when you stop in intermittent, they will go off. On low they got to intermittent. Guess what they do on high?

 

+1

 

Yup, on low they go to intermittent automatically. Nice feature, so you don't have to adjust your wiper speed at every red light...

 

Early 07 cars did not have the button on the end of the wiper stalk enabled initially. If you have been to the dealer in the past year and half and have had the computer(s) updated the feature should work for you.

 

The intermittent function on the MINI is the worst of any car I've ever owned. There is no adjustability in the delay between wipes, so 90% of the time the delay isn't ideal. It's great that they programmed them to drop down a speed when at a complete stop, why not use similar logic to adjust the delay based on speed. Seems logical to think you might need less of a delay at 60 mph than 6 mph.

 

At a stop while set to intermittent, mine don't go off, they pause longer

 

Yep, I guess they spent all their money on the rain sensing wipers and didn't have any left to give us a simple switch or rheostat so we could adjust the interval ourselves based on need rather than what they know we need.....

I wish I'd known this before I bought my '09 - it does rain/sleet/snow where I live......

My '03 has the rain sensing wipers and they're no prize either......there have been times when the rain is so fine that my windshield is completely opaque and they still haven't wiped, and I have to turn them on manually to clear the windshield.

Other times they'll wipe for 5 minutes non stop when there's one snowflake on the windshield.....

 

I've heard some better things about the R56 auto wipers, but that makes me feel a little better that I didn't get those. I've taken up just tapping the stalk down for single wipes manually when I use intermittent and it's not wiping frequently enough. Annoying but not difficult. I guess the goal was to have as many things as possible be unique in the MINI, with that being a positive uniqueness not required. At least there are a lot of good things about the car to make it worth dealing with some of the rediculous "features".

 

Well I am not sure about the Non-Auto wipers but the Auto-Wipers do have some adjustability. Now it is not an easy thing to adjust as you have to go into the OBC setup by using the stalk, but it is adjustable. And the adjustabment if for the amount of rain it take to get it to wipe rather than a time setting. This makes it very very nice as when the rain or spray from other cars gets heavier the wipers wipe more often and when it stops raining they just do not wipe. Then when the rain or spray start back up they start wiping as needed again.

And compared to all my other cars (even my BMW), IMHO the MINI is 1,000,000,000 better.

 

Originally I didn't intend to get auto-wipers, but I ordered them when I learned that the standard intermittent wiper isn't adjustable. It would drive me up the wall having intermittent at a fixed single speed. Even low end economy cars have adjustable intermittent wipe and I still find it incredible that MINI doesn't.

I've ended up being happy with the auto wipers. They work well for driving in changing rain conditions. That said, I would prefer to save the money, but only if the manual intermittent was adjustable.

 

BMW seems to have gone the way of non-adjustable intermittent wipers (probably to get people over to the more expensive auto wipers).

I also add the single wipes when the wipers are intermittent, very nice that feature is available without canceling the intermittent.

Using Rain-x will really reduce the need for wipers at all so I highly recommend giving that a try.

 

I agree the single intermittent speed is idiotic. My MINI replaced a Jaguar XJ6, and the intermittent wipers never worked as long as I owned it. In fact, the single-wipe feature would quit as soon as you released the switch, leaving the wiper in the middle of the windshield. From what I read on Jaguar forums, that's pretty common on Jags of that vintage. Soon became second nature to pull and hold the wiper lever so the blades would park correctly.

I figure BMW engineers thought that crappy wipers were a feature on British cars, and designed MINI's accordingly. Just be grateful they didn't aspire to Jaguar crappiness.

 

I'm on my second R56 and on both the rain sensor worked great. I never even use the "low" and "high" wiper settings - just pressing the "A" button and letting it do its thing works perfectly, since it'll go from a long intermittent delay to high speed all on its own as conditions warrant. So you can get non-crappy wipers on a Mini; you just have to pay for the upgrade...

 

I can't stand the intermittent speed on my non-auto wipers. Its frustrating that cars way down the quality chain have better settings than my MINI. Even worse, turning it off is such a pain (going up and back down).

 

Hello, i'm new here, Greetings from Poland.

I'm bringing back thread since i found solution for that after half year.

Anybody would be interested in automatic wipers for r56 and similar that are not equiped from factory? Cost wold be around 150 EUR with shipping. This universal module for analog wipers and is not working with electronic controlled wipers so i had to produce for my Mini additional modules that are working together with this set. I was really pissed off when i bought R56S without automatic wipers and realised that I can't adjust intermittient wiper speed and if i want to make one move i'm disabling them or switching into continuos mode. If there will be interest, i'll preapre complete kit with install manual. I have it running in my R56S now for a while, so it's road tested.

 

I have a 07 Mini S and neither the rain sensor (intermittent wipers) or the auto-headlights worked. I initially thought there were unrelated problems, but not so. The previous owner replaced the windshield with a generic one without the rain sensor bracket which caused both problems. My windshield wiper stalk does not have a button on the end of it (the newer minis have a button with adjustable options). On mine, I push the stalk up once to turn on the rain sensing (intermittent) feature.
When it doesn't work, you push up once on the stalk and it wipes once and stops. If you push up twice, it is now in "low" mode where it will constantly wipe and then it will go to a non-rain-sensing intermittent mode when you stop at a light.
Because my windshield was replaced, and the glass shop put black double sided tape on the sensor and stuck it to the windshield, the light sensors could not detect any light so my auto-lights were always on and it couldn't sense any rain. I removed the sensor from the windshield, cleaned off the tape residue with my fingernail from the black box and used a razor to clean the residue from the windshield. Then I bought $6 clear double sided rubber tape (about .5-1mm thick) from walmart and put it on the sensor and stuck the sensor to the windshield and now both my auto-headlights work and the rain sensor works. Try not to get bubbles when you stick it to the windshield. Small bubbles will disappear in a couple of days.
It looks like the sensor has one optical mouse sensor and 3 small solar panels. The later minis might have moved the light sensor from the rain sensor, but not sure.