# Do you flip up the wiper arms on your parked vehical ?



## nitehawk55 (Sep 19, 2007)

Has this become the trendy thing the past couple years ? My question is WHY ?? It serves no real purpose except to evenually stretch the arm spring permanantly so the wiper has little effect with it's wiping action or in a worse case senerio the spring snaps in this cold weather rendering the arm totally useless . 
If someone thinks it is saving their wiper blades...WRONG !! It may help in the event of some snow or ice getting on the blade but when you get the price of replacing your first wiper arm new blades will be cheap by comparison .


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## shoretyus (Jan 6, 2007)

I just snapped off an arm a week or two ago. Saturn wanted $75 for an arm and a 3 day wait ...... and there is a real lack of wrecked ones in the neighborhood. It did find one for $15 but it took most of the day.


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## zdogma (Mar 21, 2006)

I thought that was an Ottawa Valley thing. I have noticed it since I moved here, and I really don't get it. I see a lot of people covering their cars with tarps around here when it rains or snows, not sure what that achieves either.


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## Starbuck (Jun 15, 2007)

I kind of thought it was in anticipation of freezing rain. People are impatient don't want to wait for them to defrost.


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## Guest (Jan 17, 2009)

nitehawk55 said:


> Has this become the trendy thing the past couple years ? My question is WHY ??.


DUDE! I had never seen this before. Not in 15 years living in Ottawa or the 12 I spent in Toronto -- until we moved back here last year. And all over the work parking lot: flipped wipers.

I was asking the folks at the office not just a few days ago what gives with that. Is it some joke someone started and now everyone does it? No one knew (and no one in my office fessed up to being a wiper flipper).

I think it's the popped collar of the office working world. :smile:


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## keeperofthegood (Apr 30, 2008)

Oi! I forget the name of the book or writer but the person was on CHCH news a few years ago talking about how to deal with winter.

Wipers down often freeze to the glass. You get a few inches of snow and ice on the glass and wipers and it isn't impatience for it to thaw its the 30 minutes idle it takes using up gas and polluting the environment (and a lot of cities are liking the tax dollars bylaw brings in).

So, wipers frozen to the glass, what do you do? Ram your ice scraper up to them, along them, and under them, and before long you get either a gouge in the glass (did that >.< that was not good) or you rip the rubber off the wiper.

So, the easy and cheep and fast way of dealing with this is to lift them off. That way you can easily clean your glass without damaging the glass or wiper, or needing long periods of idle for the build up of ice to melt.

>.< oh and that wind shield I gouged, I did the drivers side, the length of the wiper, and from then on, every time it hit the thin line it wore down the wiper, I had to replace them every two months on average after that >.<


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## nitehawk55 (Sep 19, 2007)

Well I can't say I've had too many times that getting the wipers free from the glass and cleaning things up has been an issue . What he says makes some sense but unfortunately what he didn't say or know is that it will screw up the spring in the wiper arms as you are extending them and they are not made to do that for long periods of time . 
If my blades are frozen to the glass I work them free with my hands and maybe use my scraper from an angle to loosen them when low risk of damage . If the car is loaded with ice from freezing rain sure I start it and get the heater going some but how often do you have conditions like that or the wipers freezing to the windshild that it's a big problem to take a little time to clean them ? Hell most people hardly take the time to clear the snow off their cars anymore . 

I will say that the wiper blades now are not the quality they used to be and do not last no matter how much you pamper them . I don't know if it's the rubber used or what but I put a new set on my cars every year .

I guess it's a trendy thing then......monkey see....monkey do kqoct

BTW , to me it would be a smarter thing to cut a couple lengths of ABS plastic pipe and slip those over the whole blade assy to protect them from the elements and the sun which as you know attacks the rubber .


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## keeperofthegood (Apr 30, 2008)

nitehawk55 said:


> ... Hell most people hardly take the time to clear the snow off their cars anymore .
> 
> :
> 
> BTW , to me it would be a smarter thing to cut a couple lengths of ABS plastic pipe and slip those over the whole blade assy to protect them from the elements and the sun which as you know attacks the rubber .



I like the idea of a cover. The springs, never had an issue with them, but the last vehicles I owned they came new rather wishy-washy to begin with. My last vehicle, a Mazda MPV when it rained the wipers only got 1/2 the water off the glass the rest they didn't even touch, and that was new off the line.

The rubber is less and less rubber I think. Has to be more bio-engineered stuff and chemical soups that 'act like' it. It doesn't smell or feel like the rubber of 30 years ago even. Also with sun damage, nitrogen and sulphur oxides in the air will dissolve rubber too.

Oooo and I really hate them drivers than hop in with 2 feet of snow on their car, and just drive. I saw one such here yesterday being picked up to be towed, I could not see the glass of the back window and most of the wind shield too, that is how the driver was driving it! The police got to him before he had gotten onto the highway, but he had made it half way on the onramp >,<


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## nitehawk55 (Sep 19, 2007)

Thanks Paul , it had always been my understanding that it would weaken the springs or cold could make them brittle . 

Anyway , I still think it's kind of dumb flipping your wiper arms up 9kkhhd


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## Robert1950 (Jan 21, 2006)

I live east of Toronto, and I see it in Go Train parking lots. It appears to happen around the times when freezing rain is predicted. From my experience, GTA people do stuff like this for reason - misconstrued or not.


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## djem (Sep 14, 2006)

nitehawk55 said:


> Has this become the trendy thing the past couple years ? My question is WHY ?? It serves no real purpose except to evenually stretch the arm spring permanantly so the wiper has little effect with it's wiping action or in a worse case senerio the spring snaps in this cold weather rendering the arm totally useless .
> If someone thinks it is saving their wiper blades...WRONG !! It may help in the event of some snow or ice getting on the blade but when you get the price of replacing your first wiper arm new blades will be cheap by comparison .


You must have some shitty spring experiences. It's a spring and the nature of spring steel will allow for many, many extension/relaxation cycles. Probably well over 250,000 times before a failure due to fatigue. Think of a car spring. I'm also pretty sure that the amount a wiper spring gets stretched is within the elastic range, meaning that when you relax the spring there is no strain to the metal, IE: deformation or 'stretch' as you call it. It will relax back to it's original length.

Another thing, the steel won't snap due to the cold. It would have to be ridiculously cold, as in dumping the spring into liquid nitrogen type of cold, for it to snap.

I just wanted to point these things out from a technical/engineer's point of view.

Leaving them up before a storm will help in cleaning the windshield faster/easier and saving the rubber wiper component. It actually does make sense and you don't have to woryy about stretching springs or having them snap in the cold.


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## guitarman2 (Aug 25, 2006)

iaresee said:


> DUDE! I had never seen this before. Not in 15 years living in Ottawa or the 12 I spent in Toronto -- until we moved back here last year. And all over the work parking lot: flipped wipers.
> 
> I was asking the folks at the office not just a few days ago what gives with that. Is it some joke someone started and now everyone does it? No one knew (and no one in my office fessed up to being a wiper flipper).
> 
> I think it's the popped collar of the office working world. :smile:



I have never seen this ever. But then I notice that I don't really notice windshield wipers on parked cars


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## nitehawk55 (Sep 19, 2007)

Well it looks stupid and I've only seen it become the trend the last couple years . I'm gonna run around parking lots and put them down.......kkjuw


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