ERI LA Socio-Political Blog

You’ve no doubt seen how many Windscreen Wiper Blades are at their worst just you need them: on those cold dark winter mornings. We’ve all struggled with Windscreen Wiper Blades that have gone rigid with the cold, so they can’t flex to the shape of the windscreen, and the result is that they only clear 1 or 2 patches on the screen, leaving you with drastically impaired vision, just when you most need an unimpaired view.

Even worse, on those really cold mornings, especially when you’re in a rush, you forget to make sure that your wipers aren’t frozen to the windscreen. When you switch on the Windscreen Wiper Blades one of three things occurs. Firstly, if your very fortunate, you’ll hear a crack as the wiperblade tears. If you’re not quite so fortunate, there’ll be a deeper clunk as the Wiperblade Transmission Mechanism snaps, followed by a whining noise as the wiper motor races away without any load on it. If you’re thoroughly unlucky, you hear almost nothing because your Wiper Motor will just overheat & burn out, leaving you immobilized and facing a hefty bill to get back on the road.

There are a couple of less dramatic, but equally costly consequences of using normal Windscreen Wiper Blades in extreme winter conditions:-

Firstly, You’ll have to use a Winter Screen Wash in order to avoid the Washer System from freezing up. Unfortunately this invariably contains industrial alcohol blends which penetrate & weaken the rubber in standard Windscreen Wiper Blades.

Secondly, especially on cheaply made standard type Windscreen Wiper Blades, the multitude of joints in the metal frame shrink and tighten as the temperatures drop. The immediate effect of this is that it further limits the Windscreen Wiper Blades ability to flex, but there’s also a problem of a build up of long term damage, because, as the wiper blade is forced to flex whilst the joints are so tight, the 2 parts of the joint are ground into each other, and a lot of wear ensues. The result of this is shown as soon as temperatures rise, the joints expand and become loose. This leads to vibration, noise and juddering. The knock-on effect of this is to cause the joints to wear even more, and as the joints become looser, they chatter and wear even when it’s relatively warm, so once the wear sets in, it quickly accelerates until the Windscreen Wiper Blades become unserviceable.

Bearing all these problems in mind, a true winter wiper blade needs to have a blade which remains flexible beyond the temperatures experienced in a severe winter. Only Silicone Wiper Blades remain flexible down to -60°C. What’s more, ice can’t stick to Silicone Wiper Blades. If you’ve ever used a silicone Ice Cube Tray, you’ll remember how flexible it is as it comes out of the freezer, and how easily the ice cubes just slip out of their moulds.

A silicone blade surmounts many of the problems relating to tearing & flexibility, but only when you combine Silicone Blades with a Flatblade Wipers technology, do you fully overcome all the problems caused by wide temperature variations

So, you could say Silicone Windscreen Wipers are great Winter Windscreen Wiper Blades, which they undoubtedly are , but they’re much more than that, because unlike rubber, Silicone Wiper Blades are resistant to heat up to 200°C, and completely impervious to Ultra Violet, Ozone, Solvents and Pollution. Perhaps it would be it would be more accurate to call them Extreme Wiper Blades, because they’re as happy in the desert heat as in the arctic cold.