Intermittent wipe on rear wipers

From what I can gather from reading the manual, and finding a reference in a very early post on here, your dealer needs to configure intermittent rear wipe for you. Is this correct? My rear wipers operate at exactly the same interval whatever setting I currently use on the rotating collar - does this mean the dealer has not done it? Why would this need to be dealer-configured - what would be the point of not having it set up in the first place?

The configuring of certain items is a mystery and some dealers use it as a cheeky way to get more money out of you at an hour's labour to plug your car into their computer and switch on the control.....................

There are dealers who enable all the dealer enabled items as standard (Lookers Park Royal for one, as they enable all my optional settings at the PDI) the only issue I have with the variable rear wipe is what you say, I cannot see any variation in the interval, but it is done from the ring on the stalk. what I have found is that the rear wiper will go from intermittent to continuous depending on your speed and I wondered if this is the "con" we have been subject to when it is called variable speed! Off, intermittent or continuous is after all "variable speed"

(24-04-2012 09:56am)XFullFatTim Wrote:  The configuring of certain items is a mystery and some dealers use it as a cheeky way to get more money out of you at an hour's labour to plug your car into their computer and switch on the control.....................

There are dealers who enable all the dealer enabled items as standard (Lookers Park Royal for one, as they enable all my optional settings at the PDI) the only issue I have with the variable rear wipe is what you say, [b]I cannot see any variation in the interval, but it is done from the ring on the stalk.[/b] what I have found is that the rear wiper will go from intermittent to continuous depending on your speed and I wondered if this is the "con" we have been subject to when it is called variable speed! Off, intermittent or continuous is after all "variable speed"

That suggests that it behaves as I describe even when the dealer HAS configured it!? If the rotating collar on the stalk doesn't directly affect the frequency of wipe, what does it do, and what is the point of the graduations from 'Max' to 'Min'?? (On a long journey yesterday, my wife timed the intermittent wipe over ten wipes at the two extremes of the frequency settings and at a variety of car speeds, and the interval stubbornly remained at 3.4 seconds in all cases).

The collar on the stalk varies the sensitivity of the rain sensor on the front screen when you have the auto-on wipers so they won't come on for fine drizzle through to not switching on until there is a tropical downpour! The sensor then varies the wiper sweeps depending on how much rain it detects..................... confused? Yes so am ! I suspect the sensor also has something to do with detecting squashed flies/ bugs so you don't get a sweep of the wipers when a bug lands on the sensor but there is nothing actually on the screen

(24-04-2012 10:09am)XFullFatTim Wrote:  The collar on the stalk varies the sensitivity of the rain sensor on the front screen when you have the auto-on wipers so they won't come on for fine drizzle through to not switching on until there is a tropical downpour! The sensor then varies the wiper sweeps depending on how much rain it detects..................... confused? Yes so am ! I suspect the sensor also has something to do with detecting squashed flies/ bugs so you don't get a sweep of the wipers when a bug lands on the sensor but there is nothing actually on the screen

According to the instructions (page 46 of handbook, item the rotating collar also adjusts the intermittent delay period of the rear wiper, but adds "this is a dealer configurable option". I'm now guessing that neither of us has yet had this configured!