Windshield Wipers - Mine do not "park"... Do yours?

[Scott P]

This is certainly not a crisis but, it seems like almost all cars manufactured in the last decade or so, automatically "park" the windshield wipers when the vehicle is turned off. My Lightning does not. If I park and turn off the vehicle, the wipers will stop wherever they are... mid-wipe... fully up... whatever. Of course the "work around" is to turn them off before turning off the vehicle but this seems kind of old fashioned. I was at the LA Auto Show in November and asked the Ford guy who was tending to the electric vehicles and he said, "of course the wipers park when the vehicle is turned off"... But then we tried it on the Lightning they had there on the floor and indeed, they did not park. He was shocked. Does anyone know if this is a programing thing that I can adjust with Forscan, for instance? I suspect not because why would this feature be disabled as the factory default. BUT, thought I would ask.

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[Pioneer74]

I have never had a Ford that the wipers kept moving after the vehicle was switched off. Your truck is performing as it should.

 

[Scott P]

I was afraid of that. My only other Ford is my 1965 Ford F-250. Its wipers also do not park... but... I thought that in in the nearly 60 years of development since then, maybe it could have been resolved. :-/

 

[Randall Stephens]

I was afraid of that. My only other Ford is my 1965 Ford F-250. Its wipers also do not park... but... I thought that in in the nearly 60 years of development since then, maybe it could have been resolved. :-/

Honestly seems like a potential safety hazard to keep moving when the vehicle is off.

 

[Scott P]

I'm not sure what you mean by "Keep moving"... our other cars just keep moving enough to return to the park position. Not sure why that would be unsafe. What would be the hazard?

 

[Caliber357x]

Yeah I just noticed this too- my Audi would park then “hide” the wipers below the windshield. I’m not sure why they just let them stop mid-wipe.

 

[B177y]

I like that the "Ford guy" at the auto show assumed that the wipers would park too. Seems like an obvious feature in 2025 that somehow got overlooked somewhere between design and manufacturing stages.

 

[TaxmanHog]

Welcome to the Ford Family

 

[bmwhitetx]

So with the ice storms we get around here I see posts on FB (so it must be right) that you should purposely leave the wipers up AND pulled away from the windshield (like when you change them) when expecting ice/snow. There would make defrosting and window scraping easier. AAA agrees and disagrees.

I park in a garage so will never know .

 

[JvdMaat]

You definitely put your wipers up in snow. With proper winter blades, they may get some snow and ice on them, but you clear the windshield, and then lower them (slap them against the window a few times to get them to flex and shake the ice off), and then they warm up from your window defroster (enough to get rid of the remaining ice).
And yeah, this is how the Lightning works. It's worse for Volvo. My son's wipers are underneath the hood. So he has to hold the wiper lever up in accessory mode to have them "park" in the up position, so he can pull them away from the windshield. (and then remember to lower them BEFORE starting his car, else they violently rip back to the base position, regardless of the couple of inches of snow and ice).

 

[Calvin H-C]

So with the ice storms we get around here I see posts on FB (so it must be right) that you should purposely leave the wipers up AND pulled away from the windshield (like when you change them) when expecting ice/snow.

A lot of people do this without realizing that wind can put loads on the mechanism that could be more damaging.

A good compromise is to slip plastic bags over the wipers and leave them down on the window. The bags prevent them from getting frozen in place while not adding any wind stress.

One downside: You do have to carry bags with you.

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