Hi,
The car windscreen wipers are squealing, juddering and smearing across my windscreen. As the car is a year old and done 30k miles so they must be due for replacement.
Has anybody any good recommendations for car windscreen wipers. I would rather pay extre for quality.
Last time I replaced my car windscreen wipers, they new replacement was worse than the old worn wipers!
Regards WipeOut
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Hello WipeOut
I've just replaced the wipers on HF's Astra with blades from Halfords. So far, so good and relatively inexpensive too.
The worst wipers I ever wasted money on were those triple-blade things. I'd never use those again.
HTH
Cheers
Rob
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Stick to the major brands, Champion, Hella, etc.
Also make sure you get the right size for your car. I've changed so many wipers for customers over the years where they just bought the cheap 99p universals from the Sunday market which only roughly coverd the correct are and funnily enough didn't do a great job.
But also make sure your screen is clean, this may sound silly, but the build up of road grime can cause problems.
Manufacturers recomend changing the wipers every year ( well they would wouldn't they ) so if you are doing 30k per year then you should have changed them twice already ! ( 10k average yearly mileage )
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As an experiment I have just replced my drivers side wiper with a £10 Bosch blade. Compared to a £5 on the passenger side. I wonder which will last the longest and perform the best!
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Hello
In my experience, I suggest that the main cause is grease on the windscreen. Excessive blade pressure is a contributing factor but unfortunately, there is not a lot you can do about it. Autoglym glass cleaner is a good remedy.
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I fell out with Champion ones, as I found the joints became loose, making the blade clunk as it changed direction, I have I have bought BOSCH spoiler ones which were excellent, but the last pair feom Halfords were not, in fact they were odd, (passenger and drivers) were a poor fit on the arm, and didn't last long, they were also expensive.
I now use ones from the dealer, as they are less hassel, and actually cheaper than many on the high street.
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Have in the past tended to use Bosch blades from Halfords, and polish the windscreens with Autoglym glass polish every time the cars get cleaned, which has always given good results.
That said, the blades supplied by the dealer (Fiat) are now of substantially better quality than they were a few years ago, so may go back to those.
Someone told me once that replacing the wiper blades annually was a good (if perhaps expensive) habit to adopt.
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Don't know if I posted anything about this at the time but about 2 years ago I had a dispute with Halfords over the quality of their wiper blades. I had a Merc 190E at the time and it had a single large wiper. I have always bought Bosch wipers but on this occasion Halfords were all out. Their own branded wiper was actually more expensive than the out of stock Bosch (around 12 pounds I think) but I bought it anyway.
The Halfords wiper and fittings was a flimsy piece of garbage compared with Bosch wipers. Straight away the thing juddered and smeared. I put this down to the strong single wiper motor on the car and complained to Halfords about the quality (and price) of their blades compared to Bosch (the OE manufacturer in Mercedes case). They wrote back saying the reason their blade was so expensive was because it was engineered to Mercedes standards! A further letter regarding fit for purpose etc obtained me a refund.
Always buy Bosch
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WipeOut - what car is it? This sounds to me like a common Fiat fault which is easily sorted?
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Having owned Ford cars for a number of years now, I always buy my new blades from Ford parts, they perform to my satisfaction and they're a good price too.
It's amazing how some consumables can be sourced at low prices from the main dealer.
PP
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IIRC, a couple of years back, HJ wrote in his column, about a main dealer offering to fit new blades during a customers service.
No problem here, we think thoughtful dealer in fact!
Except the 15mins labour charge at £???????? per hour, added to the bill!!
Like most sensible garages, we would never have considered this an extra cost item!!
VB
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Andrew
The car is a Volvo S60 D5.
WipeOut
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Just bought two new wiper blades for my 2002 model Passat.
Had to go to the VW main dealer as neither the Halfords or Bosch brands make them.They are assymetric and rely on a special centre moulding to hold them on once against the screen.
Not all bad news - they were ~£22 the pair including VAT.
Also got a new remote battery , fitted for £2.
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Just been looking for a bill and saw my last wiper blade one from the Vauxhall dealer for my Omega: drivers - £6.63 and passenger £3.57 + VAT. These are proper Vauxhall ones which have a neat plastic spolier, fit perfectly in seconds without choosing from a selection of 5 dodgy clips.
I also got a free bottle of screenwash with every pair. The dealers seem to be getting very cheap on this sort of thing.
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Hi,
Have used Halfords own brand on my Wife's car which is Citroen Xsara and found them OK.
Cheers
Jlo
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Hi, Have used Halfords own brand ....... and found them OK.
And they are cheaper if you buy the fronts as a pair, rather than separately.
--
L'escargot by name, but not by nature.
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Got a Bosch set from GSF a couple of months ago for my 306, £11 for two fronts and one rear, worked fine for the three months before i sold the car
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