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For several years now I have been downsizing my wiper blades. The Ranger calls for 18-inch blades, but I am running 13-inch blades on it and love it. The longer blades only wipe part of the windshield I never use. On the 1999 Plymouth Voyager I just bought the blades were 28 inches long so I went to down size them and ended up with 24-inch. Works fine. I would have tried 22's but there mount is a little different on the really big blades. I have downsized them on all my cars. I figure it will give me less problems and better wipes and less wear on the motor, but that is not why I do it.

Interesting. I go the other direction...I upsize until they cover as much glass as possible.

I also prefer that stickers are stuck as deep into the corner as possible...having my inspection sticker inches up from the bottom and an inch away from the side irritates me, and in the other corner I put my parking and town dump stickers as deep as I could, trimmed them, and overlapped them a little. I know I'm not likely to need to look at that tiny bit of extra space while driving but I still prefer as little obstruction as possible. I also don't like stuff dangling from my mirror.

I was thinking of replacing the arms on my Buick with ones that fold so I can pop the wipers while parked in snow/ice storms to prevent them sticking to the glass. The donor arms I was considering are shorter and I was thinking that'd be great, then I could use longer blades and they'd wipe more at the bottom as well as at the top.

On the other hand, I sometimes wish the tinted top of my windshield was opaque and reached further down to prevent solar glare.

I think that's dangerous, simply because there's not part of the windshield that I never use, like you stated. The more windshield I have, the more I can see. When it rains, I'd hate to be stuck behind a small wiper and not be able to see clearly.

We don't have any inspections, so no inspection stickers. Instead I put fun stickers in window:

Yeah, I know, my stickers are not parallel. Close enough. Some will think I am a ricer with my stickers, loud muffler, and winding it out a lot, but at least I don't have a wing on it! Or Buick holes!

Nice idea to put wipers up so they don't freeze to window, but I would probably get them frozen up and drive around looking goofy.

Ah, the Voyager van I just bought has purple tint at top--ugh! Worse yet, the top 10 inches of windshield is not used unless I want to look at tall buildings or something. I would like to black that out, can I paint inside of window at top or something. Kills two birds: too tall windshield and awful purple tint.

Not danger, I see fine, and think it may wipe better with shorter blade less chatter and more pressure on squeege effect.

InlinePaul wrote:Nice idea to put wipers up so they don't freeze to window, but I would probably get them frozen up and drive around looking goofy.

I've never experienced/heard of them getting stuck in the up position, but if it happened then you could chip away the ice without worrying about breaking anything since that hinge area is all metal.

Ah, the Voyager van I just bought has purple tint at top--ugh! Worse yet, the top 10 inches of windshield is not used unless I want to look at tall buildings or something. I would like to black that out, can I paint inside of window at top or something. Kills two birds: too tall windshield and awful purple tint.

Black paint sounds like it'd work fine. Might want to use watercolor or something with a similarly inoffensive scent and similarly easily removed in case you get some on the headliner or drip it on the dash. My first thought was that it should go on the outside but it would draw more attention there...though I see that you're much less averse to attention than I am.

My fronts I keep factory size. Saab designed a system that actually gets most of the windshield. The rear wiper I went from something around 20-22 inches up to a 26 inch blade. Not having a completely clear windshield infurates me. The worst is when the left wiper leaves a ton of uncleared space next to the A pillar, essentially Doubling its size once the dirt builds up.

A lot of new cars come with this style (bracketless) wiper blades. From my experience, they do a great job of wiping along their entire length, even at the edges. I'll never go back to the older style wiper blades again.

I thought there was some sort of a hybrid design out, too that's currently heavily marketed by Michelin (I think), but I do agree - I've been using bracketless wiper blades since about 2007 and I like them.

AHTOXA wrote:I thought there was some sort of a hybrid design out, too that's currently heavily marketed by Michelin (I think), but I do agree - I've been using bracketless wiper blades since about 2007 and I like them.

Yeah, I think they do just as well, if not better.