I brought you a public service announcement aimed at combating waste: if your wiper is broken, you don’t have to replace your entire arm. In fact, doing so may be a stupid way of wasting money and precious natural resources. On the contrary-as I learned in the project Krassler recently-you might consider replacing only the rubber strip, called the “pen core”.
I totally hope that the older generations in our audience will email me saying how stupid I am writing about windshield wiper refills. “Who doesn’t know about this?” They will joke, without realizing that, in fact, many people don’t. When most people arrive at the store to replace their chewed windshield wiper, they usually see a large selection of wiper blades. You know, these things:
Have you ever wondered why you want to replace the entire blade? This is not like metal wear. I mean, sometimes it will deform a bit and the paint will come off, but in most cases, people will replace the wipers because the rubber strips have become a bit tattered. So why not just replace the failure?
As far as I know, this was more common a few years ago, but now, people tend to just buy new blades, metal casings and all products (although some people prefer beam blades like the one below).
The flat/cross-beam blades shown above have become very common in the past ten years and are not made to replace rubber bits, but old standard wipers.
These are usually metallic, and—as auto parts supplier Champion writes—connect a single “central bridge” to the rubber strip through “joint links” that create four to eight pressure points to Help the spring in the wiper arm to exert even pressure on the windshield. You may be very familiar with this type of wiper, as shown on the left side of the figure below:
I had to replace the back beam blade on the 1994 Chrysler Voyager (shown at the top of this article), but when I first saw how my arm was set up, I was a little worried. The problem is that my blade has an integrated cleaning nozzle, which means I know I can’t just walk to a local store in Germany and buy a new blade. “Oops, I have to order one from eBay and wait another week,” I said loudly.
“Uh, just replace the rubber,” my mechanic friend Tim told me. “What?” I asked. For some reason, I never thought about this idea, maybe because the wiper components are too cheap now. “Yes, I will order a new strip.” At least tomorrow you will be ready for inspection,” Tim continued. He called the store and ordered the parts.
He doesn’t just choose a standard part to cut into the right size, although he can choose. Instead, I measured about 45 cm of wipers, and the store ordered the closest size.
The next day was one of the Enlightenment. Tim showed me that all I had to do was use pliers to pull out the two long metal strips that held the wiper in place. You can see how the metal strip fills the gap of the rubber in the picture below, press the rubber tightly on the metal wiper “claws” to hold everything in place.
Slide the two straps out, and the soft, now unframed rubber sheet will pull out directly from the claws.
Slide a new wiper “refill” into the claw, and then push the two strips until they reach the “stop” in the refill (shown below), and you’re done. If you have a good set of fine-nosed vise, it will take up to two minutes.
According to the wiper company Trico, the price of only replacing the refill is only half the price of replacing a complete blade. Not surprisingly, as a certified cheap bastard™, I fully agree with this cost-saving approach:
I have to say that in addition to saving costs and environmental benefits, replacing the wiper refill is also very satisfactory. I do not know why. But it just. Have time to try!
Are people still buying and using these rubbish metal super-structure, easy-to-fail wipers? To me, they are like time capsules in 1995.
Aero/mono blades are much better. Better aerodynamics (mpg, although difficult to measure), better speed wiping (moulded for downforce), less prone to damage and failure under icing conditions (knocked with an ice scraper will destroy it immediately Metal garbage bridge). And more.
You can buy bosch or ancos for $20 each, and they can be used for 2-3 years! Don’t buy this kind of disposable metal garbage.
Post time: Sep-24-2021