4 ms·
Single wipers leave a huge blindspot of dirty windshield by the top corners where many other wipers wouldn't. It was coo, but had drawbacks.
by spitfire 10y ago
Single wipers leave a huge blindspot of dirty windshield by the top corners where many other wipers wouldn't.
It was coo, but had drawbacks.
- kbenson 10y agoActually, the Mercedes system extends the single wiper towards the corners as it rotates, making it more of a beveled square than semicircle area that is covered.
- shezi 10y agoIn fact, it extends farther out than a square form, making it into a bulging square, or something of the like. We used to have Mercedeses when I was little and I always used to wonder why the inside wiping outline would be round and somewhat M-shaped. You can kind-of see this in this wonderfully retro polish marketing video: https://youtu.be/XceslAEY2i0?t=69 https://youtu.be/XceslAEY2i0?t=69 (watch the lower end of the wiper blade for the outline of the water wiped away).
- to3m 10y agoGreat find, thanks :) - couldn't find any good action shots when I was searching, and nothing that showed off that unusual outline (that I remembered from the Mercedes my family had when I was a boy).
- rz2k 10y agoDid you ever find out? My guess is that while it looks like there is a fixed axis with variable extension, the axis of rotation itself is also moving from side to side.
- to3m 10y agoVideo of apparently reverse-engineered model: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGO8B86PZDg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGO8B86PZDg
- shezi 10y agoOh, hey, sorry. I did find out, and it's nothing very complicated: The wiper moves out about 10cms during rotation. That distance, applied to a circle with a radius of 10 cm is a large distortion (the inside track), while applied to the larger outside radius just turns it into a round rectangle.