If, like mine, your Smart fortwo or forfour has the auto wiper function and if, like me, you’re driven mad by how terribly it functions, there’s a solution.

Smart 453s with the auto wiper option don’t have a traditional intermittent setting, instead relying on the auto wiper function to understand what drizzle is (it doesn’t) and then regulate the wiper frequency accordingly. In theory the sensitivity of this can also be further fine-tuned by choosing a position on the wiper stalk’s “raindrop” dial, but in practice a change to this setting rarely has an appropriately logical response. This can get wearing.

For those not content with their standard wiper setup – mad fools! – there’s a guide on Evilution that runs through the replacement of the wiper stalk and the coding of the car to activate auto wipers, so I decided to follow the latter portion of that guide in order to deactivate the auto wiper function and see what happened. Turns out the “auto” setting of the wiper stalk simply reverts to a standard intermittent function and the “raindrop” dial works to increase or decrease the wiper frequency in logical steps. Perfect.

I’m sure Evilution has done more research than me but should you really want that auto wiper function (why?!) I’d suggest coding in the activation before purchasing a stalk, just in case the latter isn’t strictly necessary.