Surgical Spirit and Windscreen

Oct 08, 2013 15 Replies

Mentioning all the grease that appears on the car windscreen, someone has given me a small bottle containing some surgical spirit, to clean it off with.



I'm wondering that a tiny bit of grease as well as the normal glass polishes, act as something of a lubricant. So using surgical spirit as a regular remedy may cause some extra friction and hence excessive wear on the rubber blades? Any thoughts ?


Surgical spirit doesn't work well as a screen cleaner; it seems to be slightly oily, and increases smearing.

Everyone has their favourite screen cleaner. My preference is for something slightly abrasive such as Cif.

Wiper blades are pretty inexpensive in terms of the total cost of car ownership, but if you want to get the maximum life from them keep your screen as clean as possible, cleaning the blades at the same time, and don't use the wipers for removing ice, snow, bird crap or leaves from the screen. Using a good quality screen wash as frequently as seems sensible may also help.

Chris

It was the word 'abrasive' that did it.

Wikipedia says UK surgical spirit is ethanol plus isopropanol which I don't believe. Superdrug says it contains castor oil as well, which explains its "oily" character. I really wouldn't like to say whether it would increase or decrease the friction of rubber on "dry" glass, but you don't want oily residues (like diesel) when trying to remove rain from a wet screen.

It may be ok for removing sticky residues, e.g. car park tickets.

An old cleaning remedy was two sheets of newspaper, the first one used wet and the second used dry. This might have left some trace oily residues from the newsprint, but it certainly works.

Hand-hot water and detergent. Then rinse with clean water.

You missed the word 'slightly' in front of it;-)

Cif and similar products are an order or two of magnitude less aggressive than jeweller's rouge, which can be used to polish out light scratches in car glass. The surfaces that Cif is intended to be used on are far more delicate than glass.

I've been using out since before the named was changed from Jif, in one case on a car I owned for 10 years. It had no harmful effect at all.

Chris

You are a splash of some white vinegar short of properly clean glass.

In a spray bottle it can go to 50/50 mix.

Not for the last 30 years. In the good old days your hands used to be black after reading a newspaper! About the same time as the as some of the larger newspapers moved out of fleet street modern printing processes and different inks made cleaning of any windows with news paper less effective. Regional newspaper publishers may have taken a further 10 to 20 years to change technology.

[...]

Indeed; my butler no longer has to iron my copy of the Times.

Chris

Window cleaner from e.g. Poundland is OK. Remember to bring your passport.. They take UK Pounds.

What you do in your own time is no concern of mine.

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