I can't pull up the wiper blades arm when trying to clean the windshield on the passenger side bec. it is hitting the hood. I don't know if I need to re-adjust it or is this how it was designed. Can somebody enlighten me on this? BTW...99TL.

 

it's designed like that, the only way i know of to get it up is to turn your windshield wipers on and then take your key out of the ignition...stupid design, not sure why it was made like that

 

It's an engineering flaw. It's like that on all 2G TL's.

 

all u gotta do is tap the switch down so the the wipers move a little bit, then u can pick them both up..if u shut the car off while its like that, u can move it up and down by hand...thats wut i do

 

Thanks guys. Engineering flaw it is.

 

It's not an engineering flaw. It's designed that way on purpose to keep the wiper's out of the wind.

 

You don't need to do anything fancy. Tapping the wiper control arm towards the floor activates the quick wipe feature. Constant pressure makes it go fast, one tap makes it do a normal speed cycle, a very fast tap brings them on to the windshield. It might take you a few tries.

 

I still think that's a flaw because they should have made the hood high enough so you can pull the wiper. My other cars doesn't have this problem and both are Hondas.

 

None of the cars I've owned or driven had this problem. In fact, the first time I washed my car, I flipped up expecting it to come up without a problem, and I freaked when the wiper arm hit the hood.

The problem has been fixed on the 3rd gen TL.

 

My father tested a new Audi A6 (before he bought his Lexus LS430) and it had a really neat feature, in the nav system/ car control screen it had a feature called wiper maintenace position. hit that and they came up and stopped and would stay there until you either used the wiper controls on the column or went back in to reset it in the computer. Thought that it was pretty good. now the LS... well they have a real design flaw... even in the up position, you can not raise the wipers into a locked position, can only lift them off the glass a couple of inches. A real pain in the ass to clean the windshield or change the wiper blades.

So I can live with having to bring mine up and kill the ignition. at least it makes things easier than that damn cheap ass LS430. Just kidding, it really is a nice car, but just has some minor things that for a car of that caliber, one should NOT have to deal with, and who would ever think to check something like that out before they bought the car?

 

what I did was I took a 14mm wrench loosened the nut that holds the arm on, slightly adjusted the arm up, tightened the nut back, so the position of the arm is easier to push up and past the hood without f*cking around tapping the control. Mind you it doesn't pass cleanly but I can push it enough to clear the edge of the hood.

 

ask a lexus guy how to pull up your windshield wipers..i'm sure they have a sane way of doing it. Those lexus engineers aren't that stupid.

 

hmmm.... well when the hinge to the wiper arm is BELOW the line of the hood when the wiper is in the full up position, AND the dealer tells you, "that has been mentioned before and there is nothing we can do about it" .... Kinda tells me that they dropped the ball on this one..

 

Well the owner's manual does mention what you have to do in order to change your wiper blades...

 

its not so much a design flw. its just the way the car is designed around the cowl area. they could have done it differently but they would have had to move them up further.
ever try to change wipers on a 88-95 grand prix, they have to be in the UP(all the way on) position to do it