General Windscreen wipers

[Sarah6969pink]

Hi All,
Well I've had Florence for almost 2 months now, and due to a long holiday/lift sharing and the nice weather today was the first day I've had to drive her in the rain!
Anyway despite it being really wet my wipers were very 'juddery' (like they are on cars when you are use them on a dry screen by accident). Just wondered if anyone else had experienced this?
Do I need to take it back to the dealers to have this looked at? Or do you think it's just because its the first time I've used them?

Any comments/advice greatly appreciated as always!

 

[Andy Monty]

I take it the Lovely Florence is almost new?

if so its likely that the screen and wipers need a good clean now there are lots of good cleaners on the market but the 2 i use are

autoglym Fast glass

and autoglym Glass polish

give the screen a clean with the polish and then the fast glass and gently wipe the blades with a bit of fast glass the roads are filthy at the moment and there is a lot of oil and grease been thrown up from the long dry spell

And before Lloyd lynches me for some reason the attach images is not playing ball

 

[306maxi]

Hi All,
Well I've had Florence for almost 2 months now, and due to a long holiday/lift sharing and the nice weather today was the first day I've had to drive her in the rain!
Anyway despite it being really wet my wipers were very 'juddery' (like they are on cars when you are use them on a dry screen by accident). Just wondered if anyone else had experienced this?
Do I need to take it back to the dealers to have this looked at? Or do you think it's just because its the first time I've used them?

Any comments/advice greatly appreciated as always!

They all do that. Personally with my 500 I've found that the more I clean the screen and the blade the more juddery they get!

 

[nebrog23]

Agree with maxi, its a 'feature'. Mine always did it and I tried lots of cleaners, tried leaving it and the dealer checked it over. It did get slightly better as the wipers wore in becasue when I got new blades they where worse.
Maybe some Bosch blades or other brand would help.

 

[jrkitching]

That big drivers side blade will drag unless both screen & blades are really clean. Mine were terrible when I collected the car but now work just fine after decontamination, cleaning & polishing.

As others have said, Autoglym Car Glass Polish is the stuff to use.

First wash the screen & blades thoroughly. At this stage, it helps to clay the screen too - this step should get rid of any wax & limescale deposits from hard water, the latter can otherwise be a real pain to remove.

Then apply the CGP (you need to leave it to dry completely before polishing off); it leaves a teflon-like coating on the surface of the screen (you get great beading too!). It's essential to do the blades with CGP as well, polishing them in the same way once dry.

Fast Glass is good for plastics (which should never be cleaned with CGP as it can scratch them) & other glass but for the windscreen the microscopic coating left behind by the CGP seems to help stop blade judder.

Halfords have a multipurchase offer on these and other car cleaning products just now.

 

[RobW]

use a decent pre-mixed screenwash and clean the blades when you wash the car

 

[jrkitching]

use a decent pre-mixed screenwash and clean the blades when you wash the car

That will help if your tap water is hard or otherwise cruddy as any screenwash is only as good as the water you dilute it with.

I actually use a concentrate ('cos I'm basically a scrooge) and dilute it with water from my dehumidifier (which is essentially distilled water). Same goes for antifreeze & other stuff that needs to be diluted.

 

[306maxi]

That will help if your tap water is hard or otherwise cruddy as any screenwash is only as good as the water you dilute it with.

I actually use a concentrate ('cos I'm basically a scrooge) and dilute it with water from my dehumidifier (which is essentially distilled water). Same goes for antifreeze & other stuff that needs to be diluted.

Anti-freeze should always be distilled/battery water. The stuff from your dehumidifier is better than tap water but still not pure enough.

For the screenwash I always use a concentrate as you can mix it to your needs. During the depths of winter I was using a very strong mix and it was great and as it got warmer I weakened up the mix as necessary. No juddering for me.

 

[Funky Spike]

I found that eventually the juddering just got less and less until it stopped when the car was about 4 months old. No special cleaning or treatments.

Spike

 

[jrkitching]

Dehumidifier water is condensed water vapour; the potential contaminants are particulates (dust mostly) from the air, so for the antifreeze (& even for the screenwash if I can be bothered) it goes through a filter paper first. If you boil a panful dry there is absolutely no residue whatsoever - unlike some of the deionized battery waters I've tested in the same way.

Actually I filter the antifreeze again after diluting it as the last thing I want is any grit in the cooling system to damage the water pump bearings and seals.

 

[jrkitching]

I found that eventually the juddering just got less and less until it stopped when the car was about 4 months old. No special cleaning or treatments.

Spike

Well the rain will clean the blades & screen eventually but CGP will do it in 4 mins if you don't want to wait 4 months.

 

[306maxi]

Dehumidifier water is condensed water vapour; the potential contaminants are particulates (dust mostly) from the air, so for the antifreeze (& even for the screenwash if I can be bothered) it goes through a filter paper first. If you boil a panful dry there is absolutely no residue whatsoever - unlike some of the deionized battery waters I've tested in the same way.

Actually I filter the antifreeze again after diluting it as the last thing I want is any grit in the cooling system to damage the water pump bearings and seals.

Of course it's just condensed water but tbh I still wouldn't trust it. Would definitely use it for screenwash though but tbh just couldn't be bothered

 

[306maxi]

Well the rain will clean the blades & screen eventually but CGP will do it in 4 mins if you don't want to wait 4 months.

Personally I found that the more I polished and treated the screen the worse the problem was.

 

[Janep1]

I'm afraid I'm going to go against the flow here and say that mine have never been judddery.

As with Florence my car didn't get wet for the first 2 months (it's now 4 months old) but when it did rain, I noticed that a portion of the wiper didn't wipe the rain away, just smeared it over the windscreen instead. I took it back the they replaced the wiper blade and everything is perfect now.

I've also got RainX on the windscreen so I don't know if this makes the wipe smoother, but even before I put it on, there wasn't any juddering.

So I'd say, try all of the above and if you're still not happy, it's worth a visit to the dealer to see if they can do anything.

 

[306maxi]

I've also got RainX on the windscreen so I don't know if this makes the wipe smoother, but even before I put it on, there wasn't any juddering.

Strangely enough with RainX mine is more juddery

 

[Maisie]

Mine used to judder a lot when the car was new, but I haven't noticed any lately. You'll probably find it wears off after a while.

 

[bzxhms]

I had similar problem with mine. I removed the rubbers and reversed them in their holders. No more juddering.

 

[Pinkindiechick]

I drove mine in the rain for the first time this morning and noticed the jumpy wipers. I thought it was just because it was new!!

 

[306maxi]

I drove mine in the rain for the first time this morning and noticed the jumpy wipers. I thought it was just because it was new!!

It is.

 

[JTD_Liam]

On the Mk2 Puntos, Fiat apparantly used too much grease around part of the wiper motor or wiper linkage (one or the other) and this caused the wipers to judder alot. They were juddery anyway but this added to it.

I wonder if theyve done a similar thing on the 500 and the reason the juddering dies down with age/use is becasue the excess grease wear off somehow.

Just a possibility. Either way juddery wipers are abit like premature cancelling indicators - alot of Fiats have them & they can be very easy or near impossible to cure, depending on how lucky you are.