wipers 97 escort spring pressure low: shim/add spring or replace

Your wiper blades have gotten stiff and aren't soft anymore. That is why they will not wipe unless you push down.

If you insist on playing with it, get some new blade holders that are taller.

Ted

"Ted Mittelstaedt" wrote

You must have missed words 3 & 4 of his first sentence.

"MasterBlaster" > they will not wipe unless you push down.

Oops I did. In that case, the cheap fix is to try taller aftermarket blade holders as I mentioned.

Another thing I forgot to mention is the condition of the window glass itself - older glass that is pitted sometimes won't wipe well.

Ted

Wiper arms are sold as an assembly only, you can't buy the spring separately.

It's common for the last couple of inches on the right passenger side to miss the glass because of the curve of the windshield at the point. It's also common for the wiper to miss the glass at highway speeds if you're using winter blades. And don't forget that the passenger side uses 18" blades, not the 20" on the driver's side.

New wiper arm is about $23 + s/h.

Well that might be $700 CDN, maybe I'll check Ford first. Its a spring thing. How to fix? I could shim a little on each end (couple mm), or add another little spring partial or full length, or replace the whole one spring. I wonder if there are places that could tell me what spring I need. Apparently spring pressure is advertised somewhere by Ford. May take an act of Congress to get it. It might be a trick changing or adding a shim or spring. May have to remove the arm - don't know if thats tricky for wahtever reason. I tried 2 different brand new wipers. Its the middle of the blade swipe (about 65% of sweep area). It only takes a little more pressure, back of baby finger outstreached arm. I bet theres a lot of this going on!

The blades, themselves, can be an issue.... some blades don't follow windshield contours very well... even worse when temps drop and rubber stiffens or poorly made blade mechanisms resist arm pressure... Add that most windshields these days are full of compound curves... making blade felxibility more important.

You can try bending the arm, itself, to add pressure but I've yet to see this work well. There are "helper springs" available in the aftermarket... these are fugly but do help...

HTH...

whats fugly mean?

helper springs, now were talkin. Where in Toronto.

Its a single solid arm non-rubber-shielded new fangled one now. Same problem with the rubber-shielded new one.