Replace Windscreen Wipers
There’s always a time, that light blub moment when you remember the need to replace your windscreen wipers…it generally tends to be when it starts to rain!
Ok so you know they’re cheap, you know they should be easy to install, it actually looks simple enough, but are you still using those rackety, old, worn out, useless pieces of rubber, and more importantly, can you remember how to replace them?
“To replace windscreen wipers is something easily forgotten”
But today it’s warm outside, it’s dry, so this blog is an easy to follow 10-minute guide to help you replace windscreen wipers, saving you money and time.
Step 1: Remove the old wipers
Replace windscreen wipers
The first step to replace windshield wipers is in getting those shabby old wipers off, off, off.
Word of warning though, take extra care when removing them. Your wiper arm is made of metal and your windshield is made of glass, and if the two come together… a scratch isn’t the only thing you may have to worry about.
To replace the old windscreen wipers, pull the entire assembly away from the windshield, it should naturally prop itself in the raised position.
Holding the wiper with one arm, find where the small tab meets the metal arm and depress the tab on the underside of the wiper using your other hand.
With the tab depressed, slide the wiper off the arm by pulling the centre toward the bottom of the wiper arm.
Step 2: Don’t crack your windscreen
Replace windscreen wipers
I don’t know if you’ve ever realised, but in order to keep your wipers pressed to the windscreen during a storm or when driving at speed, the metal wiper arms that hold the wipers in place are usually spring loaded.
This also means that when you replace windscreen wipers without the soft rubber wiper on the end, if you’re not careful, the metal arm can and will do some serious damage to your windscreen!
Prevention is better that cure, so to stop the wiper arm from snapping back and hitting your windshield, carefully rest the replacement windscreen wiper against the windshield while you are getting your new wiper ready to install. Even if you grab hold of it, play it safe and place the arm in the down position with the wiper blade against the windshield to keep it from snapping back.
Step 3: Lining up everything
Replace windscreen wipers
The next step for some may seem a little daunting; so first take a look at the empty wiper arm and the new wiper, and focus your attention particularly on the attachment point.
It may be hard to picture how it all fits back together. The key to getting it done fast is to line everything up before you trying to click it all back into place.
If you look at the side of the wiper where it attaches to the metal arm, you’ll see that one end of the plastic clip is flat and the other has a curve across the top.
Rotate the plastic clip, until this curve is pointing toward the wiper blade. Now hold the wiper upside down next to the metal wiper arm, where you’ll see that the curve in the arm (hook shape), matches the curved top of the plastic clip.
Step 4: Click the New Wipers Into Place
Replace windscreen wipers
With everything lined up you can now fit it all together, and here’s a little trick.
With it all lined up, lower the wiper over the wiper arm, placing the arm between the sides of the new wiper with the open end of the “hook” facing the plastic clip.
Move the hook over the plastic clip, and then pull the wiper firmly upward so that the clip’s rounded edge slides into the hook. Then just take some time to double check and make sure everything has been assembled nice and tight.
Finally, carefully lower the wiper back to the windshield.
Repeat the process for the other windscreen wiper, and hey presto as Gordon Ramsay says, – “Windscreen wipers replaced – done!”
To your vehicle health
By Philip Xavier