adjustable intermittent wipers
 

Has anyone monkeyed with the wiper controls on their 123 and successfully converted it to have fully adjustable intermittent wipers.

Volvo once had a special relay for certain models that would enable you to set the speed of intermittent wipers. You would turn it on, then turn off at the desired wipe interval, then back on, and the wipers would wipe at the set interval.....kind of hard to adjust a little faster or slower.

Among the many features I wish my car had (tilt steering wheel??), the adjustable intermittent wipers seems realistic. Any help out there??

Thanks,

Mark

I just dug the prevoius post out of the archives. Does anyone know if the intermittent wiper setting on the W123/W124 can be adjusted? Mine cycles about every five seconds. It would be nice to slow down the frequency of the intermittent cycle. I noticed another MB like mine at a red light with her intermittent wipers on. Set mine to swipe at the same time hers did, but mine swiped about 1.5 time for every time hers did. Thanks.

Dave

I've wondered about this too. Leave it to MB to be overly engineered in one respect, but very spartan in another. While it's not terribly annoying to have to click the stalk once every 10-20 seconds depending on conditions, I wonder about the longevity of the mechanism being manually clicked hundreds (thousands?) of extra times over what an adjustable intermittent setting would do.

Of course I haven't heard of failure of the stalks for wear and we've some pretty high-mileage W123/W124's. Do the w210's have this feature?

Regards,
- Ryan

Well at least with the 201s and other models (not sure what ones exactly...) the wipers are controlled by a combo relay under the hood in the fuse box. This relay not only controls the wipers, but it also houses the turn signal flasher, and is the relay for the rear window defroster. I just replaced this relay in my car because the turn signals stopped working. By the looks of the insides, it appears the timing is done by either a timer IC chip, or the timed discharge of a capacitor. Either way, if you had schematics of the circuit, you could change a resistor or capacitor value to make the wiping delay longer or shorter. But to get over 3 speed settings would be more complicated, obviously.

And the insides...

Huummm...

By the looks of that IC I think I'll just keep twisting the turn signal stalk when I want to wipe.

Thanks Mark

heh heh yeah I wasn't expecting that much to be inside that thing. I see now why the turn signals weren't working. I smell something got cooked. Those capacitors have a life expectancy of about 10-15 years. Most likely one of them pooped out and fried an IC or transistor. The smell is the smell of cooked ICs or transistors. Ah memories of electronics class! :)

Am I correct in thinking that these pictures are of the relay set for the 190D 2.2? What does the intermittent relay look like for the 123's and where is it located? My 83 300D's wipers will not operate on the intermittent setting and will not park at the end of a cycle on the other two switch settings. Is the end of cycle, wiper park function tied in to the wiper motor itself? What? Where? Need help please.

That relay is out of my 190D 2.2 yes. It is in other models as well, I think maybe the later 126s had it, the 140s, possibly the 124s. The guy I bought it from wouldn't tell me what kind of car exactly it came out of, but the one description on the auction was S Class... so. I'm sure the 123's is much more simple compared to this. And the newer ones is definately more complex than this one.