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Replacing Windshield Wiper Blades
My dad used to have a saying and he said, "The best is none too good," and when it comes to wiper blades, that's certainly the case. We've got some e-mail from one of our viewers here, Bob Latta, and he says:
When you purchase a new car, the wiper blades work just great, no squeaking, skipping, etc. When you go to replace the wiper blades, why do the replacement blades at autoparts stores usually skip, squeak or just don't operate like the original?
Well, Bob, the fact is, they're not original, they're usually cheaper imitations and that's one good reason why they don't work as well.
When you're buying new wiper blades for your car far and away your first choice should be with dealer wiper blades. They are the best. However, in some cases, cost is prohibitive. You may find that some blades on certain vehicles are as much as forty bucks a blade. I've seen them that high. When the cost gets that high, you're looking at after-market blades. And there are some good after-market blades.
The best after-market blades have metal frames. The cheaper, more inexpensive ones, which don't work as well, of course, have plastic frames and that's how you weed out the men from the boys. If they've got metal frames, they're the better ones; if they're plastic frames they're usually less expensive ones. Plastic also has the tendency to fracture at extremely low temperatures, so if you're way up north or way out west, you want to stay away from plastic in most cases.
A couple of other things to keep in mind, as the vehicle ages, of course, the windshield gets a little bit pitted and the blades don't work as well, no matter how good the blades are. Also, if your car has been at a body shop for partial respraying or any kind of bodywork, sometimes you'll get a little bit of paint overspray on the windshield; if the opposite corner of the car was being painted, they may not have masked off the windshield. Sometimes in cases like that, when you turn your wiper blades on, you'll hear an abrasive sound on the windshield, it kind of sounds like sandpaper, and if you take razor blades and scrape the entire windshield, you can get that overspray off of there, your blades'll work well again.
Another thing that you can do is take some full-strength washer fluid or glass cleaner, spray it on a cloth and drag it along the rubber element of your wiper blade, drag it along and then look at it, you're going to see it's going to come up black and that gunge or crud that's on the side of the blades gets smeared into your windshield every time you turn the wipers on. So cleaning it off will give you better performance.
How long do the blades last? There's a lot of variables there, again. A car like this with hideaway wipers, where the wipers tuck down behind the windshield, the blades last a long time because they're out of the UV rays of the sun. They just last that much longer. If it's a vehicle where the blades park up on top of the windshield and your vehicle's parked outside all the time, you're going to be replacing the blades frequently. So think about maybe parking your car inside: one more part that'll just last that much longer.
'Til next week, I'm Bill Gardiner for Motoring 2002.
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