Wiper noise

tigas

Member
Hi, guys.

It started to rain in my sunny country and I'm putting my wiper to work. Is it normal for the wiper to whack into the A-pillar? It makes a bit of a racket. Should I get the floppy wiper ASAP or is it just a matter of adjusting something?

Thanks.

PS. Looks like you've had a ball at Castle Coombe...
 
ULP said:
Sounds like the wiper needs adjusting. Just remove the nut from the bolt at the base of the arm, turn the arm a small amount, re-tighten and then try it again.

I had this on my old Punto when the wipers were re-set incorrectly when I had a windscreen replaced.

Same here. Mine leaves a 10-15 cm 'wet spot', making the a-pillar even wider than it already is.
I'd been contemplating to adjust it. ULP makes it seem easy; I'll try it later this week too.
 
Thanks. The windscreen was replaced before I bought the car (it had a crack in it), so somebody made a mistake. I'll get it fixed, then.

But the floppy wiper is still coming someday!
 
ULP said:
It's an easy two minute job,and on the basis my technical ability stretches to reaching for the yellow pages to find a mechanic even an untrained horse could do it ;)

Who's implying I could be an untrained horse here?! ;)

Anyway, I just finished readjusting the wiper.
And in my case I thought it wasn't as easy as you made it sound.

First of all, the bonnet needs to come off. But that's nothing new to me.
Then the problem was that after removing the bolt you mentioned, that the wiper is still very firmly in place. I guess the shaft is conical, making it grasp the wiper when pulled in by the bolt.
Anyway, I applied some serious force to the wiper-assembly by putting a screwdriver below it and using the other wiper-joint for leverage. It only needed to move up a fraction and suddenly it was loose.
I then moved the entire assembly up and bolted it down again. However, I wasn't happy with the amount it had changed, so I went through the same procedure again.

My wiper is now quite high up the windscreen. Where it first virtually touched the corner of the bonnet, it now is a good 10 cm more upwards. I have no idea if this will affect wind noise and it also looks a bit strange, but at least the wiper now reaches up until the last few centimeters of the windscreen. I'll have to find out over the next few days.

So there you have it. Untrained horses on the job !

Edo
 
Get a floppy. The reduction in wind noise has to be experiened to be believed!
h, and the 'wiping' is improved.
 
on the subject of (ahem) floppies, does anywhere other than audi dealers sell replacement blades for these? I know you can buy the conversion kit off the interweb, but where can you buy the blades from once you have made the leap to floppiness?
 
Floppies

You can get the floppies from the stealers at any dealership around £14 and these are very easy to fit.
 
I raised concerns yesterday during Tanks first service, about the wiper judder which has come on in the last 6 months, despite a new blade and cleaning the screen with Autoglym.

They put a solvent on the glass and filled the washer bottle with their own stuff and there's no noise at all now - job's a good 'un!

Cheers,

Mike
 
Yeah, Halfords have slowly added different length of the floppies. I looks compatible but I haven't tried to measure the A2's blade.

Skips, I think the Audi washer liquid is the same as VW which my friend highly recommends it. But judging by their performance and the distinctive smell, I think it is the same stuff that Shell sells!

And on the blade adjustment, I did a conversion and also found that to get it to swipe closer to the A-pillar, raising the starting position (to almost covering the chassis number) is a must. Not sure if A2s came with the new blade have the same problem.
 
Audi have a fancy tool for checking the contact angle of the wiper blade relative to the screen.
Without the tool it's possible to do something similar by gauging the clearance between the screen and the two pivot points of the wiper arm (nearest the blade mounting point) If they are equal then the wiper is set about right. If not, gently twist the wiper arms and recheck.

Cheers Spike
 
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humps said:
And on the blade adjustment, I did a conversion and also found that to get it to swipe closer to the A-pillar, raising the starting position (to almost covering the chassis number) is a must. Not sure if A2s came with the new blade have the same problem.

My 2003 A2 came with a factory fitted floppy wiper and is no different.
The dealer seems to think that the starting position should be really low. Like almost invisible from the inside and therefore almost hitting the bonnet edge. However, that way it will miss a really wide area.

So now that mine is adjusted higher, I appear to get a very slight whistle from it. Very high pitched, not very loud but irritating none the less. I'll see if I get used to it or whether I need to adjust is back down a bit...
 
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