Ever since I bought the truck, the stupid driver's side windsheild wipers have been horrible. The blade skipps across the windsheild and makes a mess. Works better at low speeds, but highway driving is terrible.


I bought some $15 Michelin wipers that are the new arched style, and it helped a bit, but still is terrible. Passenger side is OK. Only thing I can think of is the wiper arm is worn out, and doesnt have enough "spring" to it, where it wont spring back to the window properly. Is there anything short of buying a new wiper arm? Replace the spring somehow? Anyone had this problem?

my 89 was brutal, blades would last a month.
Then i installed some PIAA super silicome rubber inserts in my blades.... the difference was night and day... a year old, and theyre still great.

Ive got those michelin type ones on my 99' and they do ok, nothing special, not as good as the PIAA's, but they are better for the winter....

I've had the exact same problem on an older car once.. On that wiper there was a piece of metal where one end of the spring attached that I was able to bend and increase the spring tension.. That didn't totally solve the problem..

The other thing I did that seemed to help more was twisting the wiper arm to get the blade "centered"..

Kind of hard to figure out how to say this clearly.. as the blade is moves in each direction, the rubber feather edge against the glass should always trailing, or leaning away from the direction of travel it is pulled along the glass..

At the end of the travel, the feather edge of the blade (if the wiper arm is aligned right) flips or changes its lean to the opposite direction as it is pulled back in the opposite direction.

If the wiper arm is twisted out of alignment so that the blades leans down excessively on one direction, it won't flip the angle when it is pulled back in the opposite direction and tends to make the irritating skipping noise..

Anyway I took two sets of pliers to twist the arm in the right direction near where the blade attaches, to more of less get rubber blade exactly perpendicular to the glass when you lift it just slightly off the glass. Took trial and error, but did manage to improve them a bit..

Does this make any sense? a picture could show this clearly, but is hard to say in words... <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/shiner.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/shiner.gif" alt="" />

On an old Subaru I had, I could never could fix this totally.. the springs were just too weak or, the aerodynamics of the vehicle just seemed to want to lift the blades at high speed..

They actually sell a helper spring for some vehicles that solves this problem. I once bought a set for a '94 Jeep Grand Cherokee I had -- worked great:

Wiper Arm "Snuggies"