Passenger wiper blade

[BarryM]

We’ve just noticed the passenger wiper blade only cleans about half the screen compared to the driver side, is there a reason for this or has a wrong size been fitted at some stage?

 

[kd7iwp]

The passenger side wiper is quite a few inches shorter than the driver side. The driver’s is 29” I believe as it needs to be long enough to clean the KAFAS camera. The other is only 21”. But perhaps it needs to be replaced if it’s not cleaning a width as wide as the blade itself is.

 

[mojo]

Asymmetric wiper blades are actually pretty common these days, on a wide variety of cars. It's done like that to maximise the forward visibility of the driver, at the expense of forward visibility for the passenger. It's completely normal on an i3. If you try to "correct" it, you will almost certainly find that the blades collide in the middle of the screen.

 

[kd7iwp]

I will note that on my drive to work today the passenger-side blade was not cleaning the bottom 5-6" of it's path. After it was going for about 15 minutes then it started to hit that spot. I guess the rubber needed to soften up a bit. Since every time you turn the wipers off they end in a down stroke, the rubber is always parked in a particular direction and when not used in a while they get stuck in that direction. Sometimes I get out of the car and lift the wipers and let them back down so that the rubber is bent in the other direction. I can't prove it does anything to help but keeps my conscience clean

 

[BarryM]

Thanks for the explanation, the passenger wiper is cleaning the full area of the blade but due to it's short length it leaves a patch unwiped but I guess we'll have to accept that's the design!

 

[kd7iwp]

I've heard others talk about putting 28" blades on the driver side since they are much more readily available than the 29". My local Costco sells only up to 28". If you don't have the KAFAS camera then that's probably a good, cheaper option. However, the length of the driver side doesn't really make much of a difference for the passenger wiper because if you put any longer blade on the passenger side it will likely contact the driver blade more in the middle than at the tip.