wipers

So turns out my 2012 M5 has rain sensing wipers, which to me is the stupidest thing in the world because if it rains, I'm sure I can turn on my own wipers and set the correct speed.

The stalk has the markers to control the speed but whatever I input is over written by the auto rain sensing wiper. It wipes too fast when there's barely any rain and much too slow when it rains hard.

Any way I can disable it and make it manual control?

just don't put it on auto. solved. unfortunately, you won't have control over the intermittent feature, but you won't have to worry about them turning on when you don't want them to.

I love the rain sensing wipers, I just leave it on auto all the time, and they seem to work perfectly for me... I live in Vancouver and boy do they get a work-out!! One thing I did notice... they started acting a little funny (wiping too fast, etc) and I couldn't figure out why... the car was do for a good interior cleaning and I found that after I gave the inside of the windshield a good deep cleaning, removing all built-up grime, the wipers worked perfectly again. Think it had just been so long since I'd properly cleaned the inside of the windshield, that it was affecting the auto wipers.

But i thought, during intermittent use, as long as you turned the knob from auto to any of the other settings, the auto was off?? Is this not correct? I've always used the auto feature so I'm not sure... I'll have to go test this tonight. if it doesn't work that way, I agree it's kind of stupid to not have the option of turning the auto fully off.

I have the rain sensing wipers on my 09 but I usually don't use the auto setting. I find it to be too sensitive at even the lowest setting. Also several times I've been driving around on a clear sunny day and the wipers will randomly wipe once when they're set to auto. I like the idea of rain sensing wipers but I don't think it's implemented very well on the 5. Same with the auto headlights, they're too sensitive for me.

+1 on the '09 rain sensing wipers being the worst feature on our GT. I have tried all the +/- sensitivity settings in various weather conditions, and found little to no difference. I told my wife the day we drove ours home to avoid using it. I have seen too many wiper motors & wiper transmissions destroyed as the wipers automatically turn on at vehicle startup when they are frozen to the windshield or covered in a foot of heavy snow.

Give me back my variable intermittent setting any day.

Note: The manual does state that you should not use Rain-X (or other similar products) on the windshield as it can cause problems with the rain sensor (big black box behind the rear view mirror). I haven't used it on mine, but if that makes it worse...