Set the Wipers to Any Position That Pleases You
If anything has become abundantly clear in the past few months, it is that we are a divided nation. It got to the point that everyone thinks that they are right in everything, and do not want to listen to what the other side has to say. Things can get hot. Angry tweets are sent.
We are, of course, talking about the position in which you install the wipers when you park your car before or during a storm.
Brief context:
Back in February, we posted a weekend post on winter windshield wipers, noting that there were two sides to this divisive issue, and then shared the position of Kevin Williams , author of Car Bibles magazine , who strongly opposes winter windshield wipers. Attention.
Fast forward to this week when The Drive (the site where we first saw Williams’ opinion) tried to end the war on windshield wipers by interviewing engineers at Bentley about the up-and-down debate. In short, according to experts, it doesn’t matter how you install your wiper blades during a winter storm. That’s why.
Why the position of the wiper doesn’t really matter
While automotive professionals — in this case, the engineers who design and test the wiper blades — might be expected to have strong opinions on this, those that Drive spoke to at Bentley did not. In particular, their position was: “It doesn’t matter, mate, it’s a purely personal decision.”
You can read the article written by Jonathon Klein for full details, but here’s a summary :
The gist of what they told us is that the wipers, their mechanisms and everything involved in the system itself are being tortured beyond what a consumer would ever face in the real world. According to the guys at Bentley , the brand’s wipers first go through 10,000 cycles at -20 degrees, then stick to the windshield, and then are removed by hand, and the mechanisms and windshield are clogged with snow, ensuring that the wipers and mechanism can withstand the weight of the specified rainfall.
The rubber itself is also being tested. They do this by examining how it responds to repeated icing, wind, rain, hail, sleet, and dust and debris. If they fail at all, they make a new iteration of the product. And as they noted, all of these steps are industry standards.
In other words, your car wipers should deal with just about anything that can happen to them when your car is parked outside in winter weather – regardless of their position.