Rain Sensing Wipers on Clarity PHEV Touring

Discussion in 'Clarity' started by descolado, Nov 15, 2018.

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  1. descolado

    descolado Member

    Wanted to see if anyone can verify whether or not their vehicle has rain sensing wipers. This came up as a feature claim on the FB Clarity group and I'm wondering if this was a model addition.
     
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  3. megreyhair

    megreyhair Active Member

    There is no rain sensing wiper, at least not for 2018. I do miss this feature though. :(
     
    Daniel M W likes this.
  4. Candice

    Candice Active Member

    On the Clarity, if you have the intermittent wipers on, they will slow down when you are stopped at a red light etc. That may be what they are referring to.
     
  5. megreyhair

    megreyhair Active Member

    That's speed sensitive intermittent wiper and not rain-sensing wiper.
     
  6. KentuckyKen

    KentuckyKen Well-Known Member

    Speed sensitive but not rain sensing (US owner). I believe that is true for our Canadian friends as well.
     
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  8. Claritydfw

    Claritydfw Member

    KentuckyKen likes this.
  9. petteyg359

    petteyg359 Well-Known Member

    I honest find that feature annoying and I don't think it actually works very well. The washer fluid can't act as a solvent (even if it's nothing but water) if it has zero time to sit on top of the dead bugs or bird poop or whatever else is on the windshield. With how close it sprays to the wiper blade and not even a fraction of a second to soak before it is wiped off, the car is relying almost completely on the rubber blade to just scrape anything off. Normal sprayers would at least give the fluid a second or two to soak and loosen crud before the blade hits it. On my old CR-V I can wash anything off in two swipes. On the Clarity, I have to keep the washer running for a good 30 seconds to get even the smallest bit of crud off, because the fluid does practically nothing.
     
    Ceetee, MNSteve, Johnhaydev and 2 others like this.
  10. ozy

    ozy Active Member

    Yes, it's absolutely useless. Today someone wrote something offensive on my front windshield using dirt. I could not use my wipers to wipe it off because the small amounts of fluid coming out of the blades were entirely insufficient to clean the dirt. Normally I would have squirted fluid all over the window and let it soak in for a while before activating the blades. Furthermore, the excess fluid usually helps wash away water dirt is there. With this arrangement there is not enough time for the fluid to hit the dirt and there is no excess fluid to aid in washing it away. The design really doesn't work. On the other hand, they do work very well in the rain.
     
  11. MNSteve

    MNSteve Well-Known Member

    This strikes me as a combination of marketing and the attitude that more tech is always better.

    When you're trying to market a product, you want as many features as possible that are different from you competitor's product so that you can differentiate your product. This windshield-washing feature fits that bill quite well. Come up with a catchy name that sounds like it's a huge improvement, and you've got a line for your marketing brochure.

    And then you've got the engineer who is convinced that if it's more complicated, it must be better. I mean, obviously, if you deliver the solvent directly to the windshield rather than squirting it from a nozzle that's far away, it must use less solvent. I wonder if they made any effort to actually trial this in the real world with a real wiper and real windshield with real gunk on it. If they had, I suspect they would have observed that using less solvent per second but having to run the system for much longer did not result in an improvement in amount used. I also wonder if this is why they saw fit to install such a tiny reservoir for windshield solvent - obviously we wouldn't be using as much with this super-efficient new system.
     
    Kailani likes this.
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  13. KentuckyKen

    KentuckyKen Well-Known Member

    I too suspect there was no real world testing of this wiz-bang George Jetson technique or it would have been designed better.
    It would actually make more sense to put the fluid delivery on the other side (reverse) of the blade. Then the fluid could sit a little longer on the crud you’re trying to wipe off. And in any event, if you’re going to put the fluid delivery on the wiper arm, then for heaven’s sake make it spray the entire length of the blade. It ain’t rocket science for crying out loud! It just needs a little common sense and realistic testing before final approval.
    This is a classic case of “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it”, although I realize they were attempting to make the weight saving small washer fluid reservoir last as long as its larger cousin.
    Classic fail on Honda’s part on a great car otherwise. How sad.
     
    insightman likes this.
  14. MPower

    MPower Well-Known Member

    The one virtue of having the inadequate fluid come out of the arm instead a squirter below the windshield is that it doesn't get full of frozen snow and ice. But why they arranged it to only squirt out of one side of the blade and that to the outside is beyond me.

    If it squirted out of both sides, that would be a great improvement.
     
  15. MNSteve

    MNSteve Well-Known Member

    It's weird. The car overall is very well engineered. No one will agree with all of the decisions, but overall they did a good job on the major things. It's the little things that seem oddly ignored. The windshield washing mechanism is one. Another is the lack of blind-spot monitoring like they have on other models, and the cross-traffic detection in the rear, another option commonly available on Honda vehicles but not this one. I find that the cruise control works much differently on the Clarity than on my CRV, which surprises me given that the controls and documentation are the same for both vehicles. The auto-lock seems problematic; I've never had an issue with my CRV but it's so erratic with the Clarity that it's essentially not usable. I love the Clarity but I just don't understand how they missed the boat so badly on a few of the relatively minor features.
     
  16. petteyg359

    petteyg359 Well-Known Member

    Too bad I bought the longest warranty possible... Can't mod and fix the washer fluid system for 8+ years :p
     
  17. wjcarpenter

    wjcarpenter New Member

    I didn't know about the smart wiper system the first time I tried to use the washers. Because of the short delay before the fluid appears, I thought none was coming out. I figured the dealer had neglected to fill the reservoir. It was only after I bought a gallon of washer fluid that I discovered the reservoir was full already. Quite a puzzler, but I eventually figured it out.
     
  18. MNSteve

    MNSteve Well-Known Member

    Good work. I had to visit the dealer. Felt pretty foolish.
     

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