Winter Wiper Blades - What Are They And Do You Need Them?
You’ve probably remarked how many Wiper Blades are at their least effective when you need them: on those cold dark winter mornings. We’ve all struggled with Wiper Blades that have become rigid with the cold, so they can’t flex to the shape of the windscreen, and the result is that they only clear 1 or two patches on the screen, leaving you with drastically obscured vision, just where you most need an unrestricted view.
Even worse, on those really cold mornings, especially when you’re in a rush, you forget to make sure that your wipers aren’t frozen to the windscreen. When you turn on the Wiper Blades one of three things occurs. Firstly, if your extremely lucky, you’ll hear a crack as the wiperblade cracks. If you’re not quite so lucky, there’ll be a deeper clunk as the Wiperblade Transmission Mechanism snaps, followed by a whining noise as the wiper motor races away without any load on it. If you’re very unfortunate, you hear almost nothing because your Wiper Motor will just overheat & burn out, leaving you immobilized and facing a heavy bill to get back on the road.
There are a couple of less dramatic, but equally costly consequences of using normal Wiper Blades in extreme winter conditions:-
Firstly, You’ll have to use a Winter Screen Wash in order to stop the Washer System from freezing up. Unfortunately this usually contains industrial alcohol mixtures which penetrate & weaken the rubber in standard Wiper Blades.
Secondly, especially on cheaply made standard type Wiper Blades, the many joints in the metal frame shrink and tighten as the temperatures drop. The immediate effect of this is that it further limits the Wiper Blades ability to flex, but there’s also a problem of a build up of long term damage, because, as the wiper blade is forced to flex whilst the joints are so tight, the two parts of the joint are ground into each other, and a lot of wear ensues. The result of this is seen as soon as temperatures rise, the joints expand and become loose. This leads to vibration, noise and juddering. The knock-on effect of this is to cause the joints to wear even more, and as the joints become looser, they chatter and wear even when it’s relatively warm, so once the wear sets in, it rapidly accelerates until the Wiper Blades become unserviceable.
Bearing all these problems in mind, a true winter wiper blade needs to have a blade which remains flexible beyond the temperatures experienced in a hard winter. Only Silicone Windscreen Wiper Blades stay flexible down to -60°C. What’s more, ice doesn’t stick to Silicone Windscreen Wiper Blades. If you’ve ever used a silicone Ice Cube Tray, you’ll remember how flexible it is as it comes out of the freezer, and how easily the ice cubes just slip out of their moulds.
A silicone blade conquers many of the problems relating to tearing & flexibility, but only when you combine Silicone Blades with a Flat Blade Wipers technology, do you truly defeat all the problems caused by wide temperature variations
So, you could say Silicone Wiper Blades are fantastic Winter Car Wiper Blades, which they undoubtedly are , but they’re much more than that, because unlike rubber, Silicone Windscreen Wiper Blades are resistant to heat up to 200°C, and totally resistant to Ultra Violet, Ozone, Solvents and Pollution. Perhaps it would be it would be more accurate to call them Extreme Wiper Blades, because they’re as happy in the desert heat as in the arctic cold.
Filed under Automotive