smeary windshield wipers

This is weird. My wife and I both drive fairly new Subarus. Mine is about a year older, and since it was new I have never been happy with the way the wipers leave a trailing hazy "glow" that disappates after a few seconds, only to re-appear on the next swipe. My wife's car has no such problems at all. I have tried various wiper blades, both Subaru and OEM and the results are the same. I have tried all kinds of ways to clean the windshield. Sometimes, after cleaning, the problem goes away for a while, but after as little as a half hour it comes back. It's as if there was a bit of oil on the windshield. I'm left wondering if the car itself is "venting" something oily from under the hood that's winding up on the windshield. Most recently, I tried a cleaning product, "No Touch" recommended by the local parts dealer. It claims to remove everything. It worked well...for a while. I've also tried RainX which itself is pretty amazing, but the problem recurs after an hour or so. Any ideas?

TIA

Jason

Reply to
Jason
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She drives a legacy and you drive an impreza right?

Carl

Reply to
Carl 1 Lucky Texan

No Carl, both Outback Legacy models - here's is a wagon, mine's a sedan (3.0R).

Reply to
Jason

DANG! lol! I was gonna try, "Hers is assembled in the US and yours has cosmolene on it from being shipped from Japan and it's still burning off" Are you sure it isn't on the inside of the windshield? Do you ever notice a sweet smell like toasted marshmallows or any type of oil smell? Does an inspection under the hood look OK? Any low fluids? How many miles/what year model is the offending vehicle? Same parking situations at night and at work?

Carl

Reply to
Carl 1 Lucky Texan

Maybe it's environmental based on where the vehicles are driven, parked, whatever. Try trading vehicles for a week and see if the hazy glow follows the vehicle ????????

Reply to
QX

Reply to
Bill Bradley

Both cars are driven under the same conditions, spend their nights in the same garage, etc etc... so I don't think there's something different in that regard. Besides, they're not strictly "mine" and "hers," we drive each about equally, depending on whether we need the extra space in the wagon for hauling stuff.

Reply to
Jason

Hmmm. Maybe this lends some support to my hypothesis that the car is emitting something oily. I did notice, last time I checked, that the brake fluid level was just very slightly low...

Jason

Reply to
Jason

I had smeary windshield wipers. Here's what works for my STi, and prior to that, on my '02 WRX:

. Cleaning the windshield:

Use pure, clean water with a touch (smidgen!) of soap for grime, and a healthy dollop of either borox or vinegar. Buy a *new!* window washer/squidgee with a straight edge on its rubber. When you store it, store it rubber-side up and keep everything away from it to prevent any bending or creasing in it. If you get a nasty crease in your squidgee rubber, it's useless. Really.

Rub down the windshield with the washer side so all visible specks of dirt dust and grime are loose. Spin the washer around, and carefully and with a smooth motion, wipe it across the windshield in horizontal stripes.

Warnings:

i. If you hear ANY squeaking whatsoever, you need more liquid on the windshield or you need to move your squidgee faster.

ii. You will need to overlap your squidgee strokes a good 1/4 to 1/3 of the width of the squidgee because of the curve of Subaru windshields.

iii. After you're done with the squidgee, please wash off the washer side, too.

iv. DO NOT use ANY cleaning product on the outside of your windshield!

v. DO NOT use ANY cleaning product harsher than a water+vinegar solution to wipe your windshield wiper blades down.

Anyway, you may have to wash your windshield like this five or six times: in the right light, you'll be able to see either rainbow colours behind your wipes, or a clean windshield. Keep going until the rainbow colours are completely gone. These are dried oil and petroleum products that have likely ingrained themselves into any microscopic scratches in your windshield over years of using your windshield wipers in nasty weather.

Then, keep going until water sheets on it and doesn't bead anymore.

Finally, wipe down your windshield wipers with a paper towel moistened with the cleaning liquid you used.

On the inside, it's almost impossible to use a real window cleaning technique. Luckily, you can get nearly as good results with Windex or Eagle

1 and some serious elbow grease.

Take two good-sized sheets of paper towel, times two. You'll need a wet and a dry, follow-up wiper.

Apply the product to the inside of the windshield and wipe down the most obvious dirt and make sure you don't let any of the drips get down to the dashboard. That would suck. You do NOT have to wipe it dry with the first rubdown.

Roll up your second, dry, follow-up wiper and dry-wipe the windshield.

Now comes the hard, annoying part. You'll need just the right light for this: you'll need to be able to see the inevitable smudges left behind by the less-than-perfect glass cleaner you used. Usually at night with a bright off-centre light is best..

Over the entire window surface, you're going to need to polish with a circular motion. The more fresh paper towel you use, the better you'll be able to polish. Polish everywhere. Carefully, firmly go over the entire inside surface. You'll never get it all, but with enough polishing you'll be able to get it clean enough that the human eye will at least be happy.

It is *NOT POSSIBLE* to manually clean autoglass that's been exposed to fingers or human skin oils and the crap sprayed up by other cars, to perfection. The best you can do is sheeting water, a nearly-perfect windshield wiper cycle, and better visibility than 99.999% of all the other people out there on the road.

After all.. *they* just live with their nasty, dirty windshields and dump windex all over them and wonder why their windows aren't as clean as the t.v. tells them they should be.

Reply to
k. ote

Oh yea.. I forgot one more thing.

There comes a point where it's just not possible to get non-smeary windshield wipers. At that point, just replace your wipers *AND THEN GO THROUGH THE WHOLE WINDSHIELD CLEANSING OPERATION AGAIN.*

Sometimes wipers are so dirty they screw up your windshield all by themselves. After a wiper replacement, you SHOULD clean your windshield again *BEFORE* you use the new wipers, or they'll need to be cleaned too.

Reply to
k. ote

Try using some rainx, it really helps make the water bead off your windshield. I found no smeary mess when I did that.

Reply to
MD

Beading water == BAD. It means there's something there for the water to catch on, which means there's something other than glass between your wipers and your windshield, which means you don't have a clean windshield.

I would be very surprised if you have an invisible windshield wiper cycle on a dark rainy night.

Water needs to sheet off your windshield without any resistance nor friction at all--that's a true, clean windshield. Otherwise, you might as well be waxing your glass..

Reply to
k. ote

Been there with the same problem. I got Subaru to fit new blades. and dumped the new Bosch blades just fitted to cure the problem which had crept up. No good. I posted here looking for answers and tried most fixes suggested. I cleaned the screen with every solvent I had in the garage...spent hours polishing the screen with special glass cleaners... tried every washer additive in the store. Nothing worked, drove me mad. Then I cracked it. I bent the wiper arms forward a tad to increase the blade pressure on the screen. Bingo...problem solved. In time the spring arm tensioners lose some tension is my guess. It worked and I'm happy!

4 yr old WRX BTW SB
Reply to
WRX UK

Actually I find that a fresh coat of rainx over a clean winshield causes the water beads to flow off faster, than do sheets of water from a plain clean winshield, past a certain driving speed. Seems like the surface friction of the glass surface becomes lower or something. Thus I don't need to use my wipers blades as much after a fresh rainx treatment, unless in slow or stop&go traffic, or if it's really pouring rain.

The rainx does seem to need to be applied over a squeeky clean winshield, and then buffed thoroughly several times, in order not to smear.

IMHO. YMMV. (and I own no stock in the rainx company, AFAIK).

Reply to
Ron N.

Thanks!

I've tried all the other cleaning suggestions with some success, but the problem always returns. I will discuss with the dealer whether there's a less drastic way to increase the tension (and will probably wind up bending the arms...). My case is slightly different - the problem has existed since the car was new. I guess it could be a design or manufacturing flaw.

Jason

Reply to
Jason

You might even be able to measure the force on the windshield from the wipers that work, and adjust the wipers which don't to match that pressure. Maybe something like a spring fishing scale could be used to measure the downforce of the wiper blades? That would at lease verify that there is a difference worth trying to fix.

IMHO. YMMV.

Reply to
Ron N.

This is probably your problem. You shouldn't have used *any* solvents. Anything people need to know about cleaning glass--they just have to call professional glass cleaners and find out what they do for a perfect clean.

Argh!! Never use additives! Especially never mix additives! Now you don't know what the hell kind of gunk is sitting on the microscopic scratches..

... and now your wipers, if you activate them when it's too dry, will last significantly shorter than factory. Rubber's going to come off and you'll have to replace them more often.

Reply to
k. ote

Or you just live in a nasty dirty polluted area and there's nothing you can do but clean your windows constantly.

Increasing tension isn't going to get you clean. It'll mask the problem with brute force and your blades will last a fraction of their normal lifetime.

Reply to
k. ote

I'm surprised you didn't also specify using distilled water, and only cleaning the windshield in the shade or in the garage when the temperature is moderate. :-)

Why not? I bought a small squeegee and a misting bottle for inside windows. Cover the dash or window sills with a big towel, mist the interior glass, rub off any grime with a paper towel, mist again, then squeegee dry. With a small enough squeegee, only the bottom edge, and maybe the spot behind the rearview mirror, need to be wiped dry. A squeegee'd interior windshield seems to fog up a bit less than one which has been wiped dry.

IMHO. YMMV.

Reply to
Ron N.

A year on...no problems and blades as new. I get a perfect wipe with no smears or drag. Think about it...the blade is held on the screen by spring tension. Springs lose tension over time and some (older) systems allowed tension adjustment. Bending the arms 1mm or so towards the screen works. WRX UK

Reply to
Clive

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