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I'm wanting to check whether the windscreen wipers on my 2017 Polo TSI are optimumly set for their parked position. So, has anybody got details of the distances from the bottom of the windscreen and from the bodywork that these wipers should sit when they're in the parked position? By 'parked position', I mean precisely that; not service position.

On the Web I found a diagram giving this sort of information for 'the Polo', but it transpired it was relevant only for the Mk5 Polo. On the 2014 - 2017 Polos, the bottom corners of the windscreen are very different to those on the MK5, being very curved, so I guess for 2014 - 17 Polos VW must have specified a different and particular reference point from which to measure the position of each wiper's blade.

This query has resulted from a recent experience with the wipers on mine. I was driving at about 25 mph at the time, in a long line of cars, with traffic lights not far ahead. It'd been raining quite lightly on and off but suddenly there was a fairly prolonged outburst of heavy rain. The Polo's rain sensor detected these changes, and because I had the stalk control on Intermittent it set the wipers going really fast when the heavy downpour ensued. And when I say 'fast' I mean fast!! At one point I thought we'd take off! Over on the nearside, the very high wiper speed was causing the passenger-side wiper to hit the very bottom corner of the screen, banging against the scuttle tray. It sounded also as though the driver's wiper was colliding for an instant into the passenger's, at that parked position, on each rapid sweep. The noise was pretty bad. I quickly pushed the stalk to 'fixed' and it then slowed to a more sensible speed.

Although clearly there's always some element of overthrow in the mechanism, I now want to avoid that ever happening again, so I want to check that the wipers have been properly angularly positioned on their drive spindles in the first place. If they turn out to be wrong, or non-ideal, I'll re-position them (a job I've done before on other VWs).

Most of you will know that the two wipers differ in size quite markedly, and I've presumed that the long, fat one always goes on the driver's side. Right? Surprisingly, I've not been able to find a photo or diagram anywhere that clearly shows that. The cross-section of each rubber isn't symmetrical either, so again I've wondered whether mine are in their respective arms the right way round. At present, they are as set by the factory.

Incidentally, with the wiper speed having been so excessively fast, I've wondered whether the speed of the wipers in Intermittent mode can be set from within VCDS. Anyone know?

I have never noticed that happening on my wife's August 2015 Polo, what I mean is I've never noticed any colliding/contacting of wiper blades with each other, or individual wiper blades touching/hitting their respective pillar edges or lower cover.

What I did notice with my wife's (South African built) 5 door Polo when we picked it up was, the wipers, both arms were parking too high up the screen when compared with previous Polo or other cars, so after checking up on other 6C Polos in maybe car parks, especially 3 door, ie non South Africa built ones, I rotated both arms down to where I considered they should park.

Speeds when in intermittent auto mode, I'd think that there is only two speeds used, the slow speed for normal intermittent operation and the high speed for when a down pour occurs. There will not be any other speeds available.

I've done some measuring and as usual I've measured some in inches and some in mm!!

So, RHD car:-
drivers side wiper arm roughly 21" from pivot to blade mounting area centre --- wiper blade length overall roughly 24" --- parking height from windscreen base to arm/blade mounting point centre 65mm
passenger's side wiper arm roughly 26" from pivot point to blade mounting area centre --- wiper blade length overall roughly 16" --- parking height from windscreen base to arm/blade mounting point centre 80mm

What that means that the LHS(inner end) of the driver's wiper blade sits at the same height as the RHS(inner end) of the passenger's wiper blade.

Right, RUM4MO, I've taken those same measurements on my Polo 1.2 and got these results:-

(All measurements taken with wipers in the parked position. Some measurements taken with bonnet raised. Your figures in parenthesis).

Driver's side arm -

Drive-spindle centre, to centre of blade-mounting area on arm: 21.5 inches (21 inches).
Blade length: 24 inches (24 inches).
Parked height, measured from base of windscreen to centre of blade-mounting area on arm: 52mm (65mm).

Passenger's side arm -

Drive-spindle centre, to centre of blade-mounting area on arm: 25.75 inches (26 inches).
Blade length: 16 inches (16 inches).
Parked height, measured from base of windscreen to centre of blade-mounting area on arm: 44mm (80mm).

When my wipers are viewed in their parked positions, the inner end of the driver's blade is 10mm above the inner end of the passenger's.

As you can see, there's a large discrepancy in our respective parked height figures, especially with the passenger one. Are you sure you measured, or wrote down, your passenger-side figure properly? I checked mine several times over. I measured my parked heights by placing a wooden metre rule between the blade-mounting area and the glass, then noted the ruler's figures on each side of the blade-mounting. That gave the width of the latter (20mm) and so I added 10mm to the lower readoff to get the exact position of the blade-mounting area's centre. Incidentally, I measured from the very edge of the glass and so the 3mm or so of plastic seal between the glass edge and the beginning of the scuttle tray is not included.

Perhaps this discrepancy, together with the 10mm blade-to-blade height difference, accounts for why my passenger-side blade, in particular, was banging against the scuttle tray? In my PM on this matter, I pointed out that on mine, on maximum sweep, a 1 - 2 inch strip of the glass at the driver's pillar is untouched. Although that's a neat parallel strip and looks like it was designed to be so, it does leave a bit of an unnecessary blind spot there. Thus, all things considered, it looks like my wipers would benefit from being repositioned on their respective drive spindles. I just hope that the mating surfaces of the spindles with their arm pivots are machined in a way that permits that. It'd otherwise seem daft to condemn a set of windscreen wipers to be left permanently in a damaging position. Who knows, at the factory, the wiper blade overshoot might have gone unnoticed, given that it happens only when on a speed that you'd have to simulate for conditions?

I think that my "height" measurements are correct for how the wipers are right now on that car. Prior to that, both wipers were parking quite a bit higher so really must have been close, in the case of the driver's side, to hitting the driver's side pillar, or maybe it did and that was what prompted me to sort it out quickly myself.

I did take note of the unswept area on the driver's side with the wipers set as they are now, and it was roughly an inch, which does not cause any forward vision limitations.

Perhaps, because of variations in windscreen wiper mechanisms for a given model (the second-sourcing scenario), there's never one 'correct' set of positions? Perhaps they're nowadays meant to be AOT (alter on test)? Perhaps at the factory they're only set approximately and are left for the selling agent at the far end of the chain to set more accurately during the course of the pre-delivery inspection? But that's supposition on my part. And, in any event, how many agents' workshops, if any at all, perform the PIDs thoroughly enough and then correct the faults they find?

I had the problem of driver side wiper hitting the pillar in heavy rain. Dealer said they could not make the wiper do it. Got fed up with them and adjusted it myself by one spline and that sorted it.

RUM4MO et al,

Working at it in the doorway of my garage, I've today (Sunday) corrected my wipers. Not very pleasant outside today. Dry, but outside the temperature was only around 7 degrees C for the 6 hrs or more I spent on this and another job on the Polo. Given that I'm reporting this from the South-East of England and it's supposed to be Spring, pushing on Summer, the current weather's an absolute disgrace.

Anyway, as far as my front wipers are concerned, I've now got them so that the two most important dimensions are:

Driver's side arm -
Parked height, measured from base of windscreen to centre of blade-mounting area on arm: 70mm.

Passenger's side arm -
Parked height, measured from base of windscreen to centre of blade-mounting area on arm: 80mm.

The wipers now work really well, with no risk of colliding with each other or making contact with A-pillars or the scuttle tray.

On my 2017 Polo 1.2, the inner ends of the wiper blades now sit at the same height. So, as you described RUM4MO. At that position, the end of the driver's blade is about 15mm above the crank in the passenger arm. This vertical separation seems to be sufficient to not have the arms colliding at the parked position (or anywhere else), even with the kind of overshoot you get when the wipers operate at their fastest speed (such as I alarmingly experienced a few days ago during a heavy downpour). I found, though, that if the driver's arm was lowered any further than that there was a small chance that the inner end of its blade could contact the passenger wiper arm. The parked height of the passenger wiper is now 80mm, considerably higher than before, and there's now no chance whatever of the passenger blade ever contacting the scuttle tray.

(Note that the width of the blade-mounting area in each case is 20mm, so the centreline measures 10mm up from the lower edge of that blade-mounting area).

The above figures now all but match those you gave, RUM4MO, so I'm highly indebted to you for your assistance in this. This is the kind of interworking that makes this website and these forums so very, very useful.

Clearly, the wiper positions when the vehicle was delivered to me last August were far from optimum, indeed far from correct, and the agent had completely ignored it. Had I left it, the passenger wiper could have eventually disintegrated, and even possibly damaged the windscreen. Warranty or no warranty, I didn't want to get the agent to fix it; it would have probably come back even worse. Instead, this required some time and care spent on it. Do and learn, I say.

As an aside, it seems that, on the 2014 - 17 Polos, extracting the passenger's arm off its drive spindle can be done with the bonnet down, but extracting the driver's arm off its spindle can only be done with the bonnet raised; you then work from inside the engine compartment. Thus, throughout the job you have to keep opening and closing the bonnet.

I stuck pieces of masking tape on the screen to show the original wiper positions, and then further pieces at the newly-required positions. Not absolutely essential to do, but I found it helped when orientating each arm over its spindle, before finally pushing it on.

I found that due to the spring-loading in each arm, you can only really check and accurately know the final wiper positions you want or need once the spindle nuts are torqued down. Sometimes this can lead to a vertical shift in wiper position of as much as 10mm, so it's best to ensure that when you replace each arm on its spindle you thoroughly grease that fit and you have a small puller to hand in case you need to re-do it. I did, several times. Getting the arms off the splined spindles each time was a real pain, as I didn't have a suitable puller. But fortunately I found that the claw of a claw hammer came in very useful. That said, do bear in mind that the edge of the windscreen glass isn't far away, so any levering you perform at each spindle, to try to extract the arm, should preferably be supplimented with a thin piece of wood, so as not to risk cracking either the scuttle tray or the glass. I found it preferable also to lay out some old but clean rags on the screen and on the bonnet near the spindles, because when the arm finally pops off, it can fall down against the windscreen or bonnet if you're unlucky.

At its maximum sweep position, the driver's arm leaves a vertical 1-inch column of clear glass unswept (note that around the periphery of the screen there's some black patterning). That's to say, the sweep stops 1-inch short of the black patterning and driver's edge of the glass. As you've pointed out, RUM4MO, this has minimal or no affect on visibility for the driver at that edge.

Please note that these dimensions are quoted with the 1.2 Match and SEL models in mind. It may well be that other 2014 - 17 Polos have slightly different body components at and around the windscreen, and therefore possibly differently-disposed windscreen wipers. So if currently you have this sort of issue with your front wipers, do check and compare before you start dismantling things. Oh and don't forget that if you re-position your wipers, you might need to re-adjust the wiper jets afterward, noting that jet adjustment on these 2014 - 17 Polos is possible only in the vertical plane.