As long as I’m using this excellent snowstorm as an excuse to avoid thinking of new articles – I mean, to rerun popular classics – let’s dust this one off from 2015.
Winter brings many vital issues to the fore, perhaps none more contentious than this: Wipers up or down?
That is, should you or should you not raise your windshield wipers when you park your car outdoors if a snowstorm or icestorm is coming?
Luke Moore, a service manager at Garry’s Service Center in Concord, laid out the arguments from both sides for me.
“If you leave them down and they get frozen (to the windshield), the wiper transmission, motor gear, can get stripped,” he said in a quick interview Monday morning. (It was a quick interview because mechanics had a lot more to do during Monday’s snowstorm than answer goofy questions.)
That damage can happen if you leave the wipers on as you park and they freeze to the glass. When you start the car again, the wipers will try to run and could strain themselves.
So leave the wipers up, then? Not necessarily.
“I have seen some issues with people leaving them up – years down the road, that little spring that holds them taut to the windshield wears out,” he said.
That is more of a problem than it sounds like, because as the spring slowly loosens, your wipers will work less and less when it comes to actually clearing the glass – not a good thing in winter.
Other concerns from the don’t-leave-them-up crowd include fear that hooligans will break them off, which seems excessive; fear that it looks dorky, which is hard to argue with but not very important; and fear that they’ll still get damaged because ice builds up on the rubber blades and gets packed around the housing, which is a legitimate problem.
A little online search found much debate over whether raising wipers as a preventive measure is sensible or foolish. There is no definite answer either way.
Steve Tibbetts, a manager at Sanel Auto Parts on South Main Street in Concord, comes down somewhere in-between.
“I don’t usually leave mine up,” he said, but he understands why some people do. Either way, he added, caution and patience are needed.
“If you’re going to not leave them up, if it’s freezing, make sure to a) let the car warm up a little, and b) pull them off manually, carefully, to make sure they don’t stick,” he said.
What about me? I put my wipers up, but I do mostly because it looks more interesting. Give me a chance to turn my car into an antenna-waving insect and I’m a happy man.
Return to the Concord Monitor
I discovered years ago that those heavy Vinal promo/sale banners are often discarded when they have served their promo purpose. I have scored a couple over the years and fit easily across my windshield covering it all. I pinch a corner on the passenger side door, giving me greater coverage on the drivers side to include the rear-view mirror. In the morning I can release the driver’s side and peel it across to the other side, dumping all the accumulated snow/ice on the side and no scraping necessary. I then fold it up and toss it into the back/trunk of whatever you drive. The heavy Vinyl will last years in my experience. If there was some ice I shut off the wiper so when I warm up the car it does a better job of trapping the heat and clearing the window under the cover.
I do the same thing except I use a large green contractor trash bag like you get at Home Depot and I cut along the outside seams and it leaves me with a perfectly sized cover for my windshield which I secure by opening the passenger door, tucking one side in and closing the door and then stretching across the windshield and doing the same on the driver’s door. It works like a charm every time!
cut a couple of short pieces of a 2×4 and put them under the wiper blades to just lift them off the surface of the glass. that won’t over stretch the spring and the blades won’t freeze to the ice; but the wood might.
I’ve always turned mine up, but I bought a VW Tiguan after I retired and it tucks the blades under the hood. I’ve tried the instructions to get them to stop above the hood, but I haven’t figured it out yet.
Not a big deal now – I have a garage and few needs to drive in the snow.
The answer is simple, a mandatory sentence for any designer, engineer or CEO that allows windshield wipers to store themselves in wells that fill up with ice. The really don’t look that bad if they are exposed.
Alternative to that would be a programable wiper park position for use when there is impending bad weather.