Every time you wash your car, especially the windshield, you ensure there are no traces of water or even watermarks. Even those marks can hinder you when you drive at night against headlights. During the day, those ugly streaks make your car look just unclean.
When you notice dirt on your windshield, you have the option to spray and clean the windshield, even as you are driving, sitting inside the car.
What about all the excess water that the windshield does not remove? The Ford F150 courtesy wipe is here to take care of it.
What Is A Ford F150 Courtesy Wipe?
Like every other car today, Ford cars also have the facility to spray and clean the windshields. Once you activate this spray, the liquid is sprayed, and the wiper cleans it three times.
Now, after a three-second pause in a Ford vehicle, a fourth wipe happens; this fourth swipe is the courtesy wipe. This additional feature aims to clear out any remaining liquid or water droplets from the windshield.
Most of the time, you must’ve noticed that after the three swipes, you may have to swipe the windshield wipers on your own a few extra times to get all the washing liquid cleared from the windshield. If not, it mostly leaves streaks which make it difficult to drive with.
Ford has gone a step further and provided this extra wipe out of courtesy for the drivers to have a clean, shiny windshield.
Advantages Of The Courtesy Wipe
You can use the windshield wipers a few extra times yourself, then why does Ford offer this courtesy wipe? How is it advantageous? Come, let’s learn more:
1. Reduces Distraction
When you use the windshield cleaning spray, it is mostly because your windshield is dirty, and you need to be cleaner to drive better. If it is not clean, it can affect your view, thus making it unsafe to drive with.
Once the wipers clean the liquid, spray off the glass; if you have streaks of soapy water left behind, you will manually turn on the wipers and let it swipe until all the liquid is gone. So, you will be focussing on this instead of the road.
2. Effective Cleaning
You are driving with a gang of friends, listening to music, joking, having a good laugh, etc. Once the wipers clean the liquid, you may let it be. As it grows darker and other vehicles in opposite directions turn on the headlights, you will be hit with glaring lights due to the water streaks on your windshield.
Now you will have to use the wiper on dry glass with dust, which can cause scratches. Your only other option is to spray and clean again. Doing this when there is a lot of headlight traffic coming your way is not advisable as your view may be affected.
This again makes it unsafe for you. When the courtesy wipe swipes an extra time after a few seconds gap, it can clean the leftover water droplets that might drip down. So, your car is cleaned the first time itself efficiently.
Do All Ford Cars Have The Courtesy Wipe?
No, not all Ford vehicles have this feature. This feature was discontinued in the year 2016. Some vehicles that sported this feature before 2016 were:
- Ford 150s
- Ford Explorer
- Ford Mustang
- Ford Expedition
The other sedans by Ford do not have this feature. However, other manufacturers have this feature in selected models under their brand.
How To Disable The Ford F150 Courtesy Wipe?
Are you one of those drivers who find this additional courtesy wipe feature more distracting than helpful? Do you want to disable this feature and reduce your distraction? Here is how you can disable it. Remember, this feature needs to be disabled through the menu on the central dashboard screen.
- Switch on the dashboard screen
- Go to the accessory menu
- Choose settings and then go to the “vehicle” option
- Scroll down the vehicle menu till you reach the “wipers” option
- Under “wipers,” you will see “courtesy wipe.” Select this option and change the setting to “off.”
- Your courtesy wipe has been disabled.
Now, since you are inside the settings menu, you can do that if you wish to change any other setting or just want to explore. You can understand what features are available and what all can be disabled or enabled in your Ford vehicle.
In some models, you need to press the setup button until you come to the courtesy wipe option and then turn it off.
Why Disable F-150 Courtesy Wipe
Why disable it when the manufacturer provides you with an additional feature for your benefit? You are paying for it; it is there in the car, you don’t have to do anything “extra” for it to work, then why go through the trouble to disable it?
- When you use the windshield washing liquid and clean the windshield, all cars’ wipers swipe about three times. The courtesy wipe goes an extra swipe after a gap of 3 seconds.
- Not all drivers are comfortable with this; it can be a sudden distraction you may want to avoid
- A sudden extra swipe may not be necessary if you are used to a car that does not have this courtesy wipe (many other manufacturers offer it too). So you might just want to disable it.
- You may not feel you need that extra swipe. If you are ok with how clean the three swipes are, you may feel the fourth swipe is just unnecessary and can disable it.
- If you live in a very dusty or grimy area where dust settles fast on the windshield, you may want to avoid the minute scratches that could possibly be made by minute dust particles that settle on the windshield after the initial clean-up.
Conclusion
Ford provides an additional feature to keep your windshield cleaner than usual. You can choose to disable it and use the regular feature that all other cars provide.
The F-150 courtesy wipe can be retained if you like it and disabled if you are not a fan.
