Wiper blade rubbers

[DRPM635CSi]

Where do you guys buy replacement wiper blade rubbers from now? They are being reported as NLA from everywhere I ask now. I bought some from an eBay seller claiming what they were selling would suit an E24, however they don't and PayPal refunded me. Seller expected me to butcher and bend the claws of my wiper carriers to fit their square profile rubber backed blades. Something I think would be not only sacriligious to do, but also not work at all because there simply isn't enough metal material there to be able to force a square peg into a trapezoidal hole.

Anyone got any tips please where you can still buy trapezoidal-shaped rubber-backed wiper blades?

[jacko]

Caring more for effectiveness than authenticity, I switched to the new Bosch beam wipers.

[Da_Hose]

I switched to the new Bosch ones too. They work awesome.

Jose

[GRNSHRK]

I used Bosch Micro Edge or now the Micro Edge II, honestly haven't looked for replacements for a while, but I don't recall if ever being a problem

[DRPM635CSi]

So looks like thread reply notifications are borked, at least for me.

So if replacing the entire forearm complete with rubbers is now the only option, then what's the closest to the originals in size & shape? Is it even possible to buy just the rubber inserts without buying the whole forearm assembly?

[baders]

As above, you should find the Bosch units pretty close.

[jacko]

Wipers and tires are two areas where I'd gladly trade better performance in place of originality. There are so many better than original things to use in place of original.

[DRPM635CSi]

Yeah fair enough, if your wheels are TRX, then I agree and have already made that change due to unacceptable availability of the correct size tyres, but that's not really the same case here with windscreen wipers.

The size required is fixed by the sweep of the arms and the size of the windscreen and wiper rubbers are consumables like brake pads and oil filters. You buy the brake pad size that fits your calipers and the oil filter size that fits the canister. All I'm asking for is the right size rubbers to fit my metal arms.

I don't replace my wheels everytime my tyres wear out, nor do I replace all my brake calipers and discs everytime the pads wear out. Why should I be replacing my entire wiper arms just because the rubber wears out (which it is entirely expected to).

[DRPM635CSi]

Just to close this one out since I seem to have more information on what's the right part here than anyone else, the OE wiper inserts are made by Valeo/SWF. They have SWF 72 moulded on them and they are still available (for now at least) from commercial/automotive/industrial wiper and clear-view systems suppliers to the trucking, buses/coaches, marine, mining equipment & heavy vehicle markets.

In SWF language they are called '6mm narrow fit inserts', are 550mm long (cut to suit - 450mm for E24s) and are supplied without the two metal reinforcing stiffeners either side of the trapezoidal backing spine, so don't mistakenly throw those out as they're made of unobtainium.

The 6mm refers to the width across the two metal stiffeners either side where they slide into the suspension hooks in the metal OE blade. So it's the corresponding inside width of the hooks.

Just for comparison, I went to my local auto store and compared my OE wiper blade with all the fully assembled replacements the likes of Bosch now want to sell and all were bigger, bulkier and will have stood higher off the screen than the originals. When the wiper on an E24 is fully visible and right in the line of sight while driving, I decided this is not preferable. Especially where I live where the wiper's primary purpose is to hold down the sunshield screen when parked and only very rarely needs to be used for moving water.

[Brucey]

that is good detective work. I'm not even sure that I still have the correct arms to accept the OE inserts any more....

BTW the stiffeners are made of stainless steel.

Here in the UK for decades car manufacturers have been supplying wiper arms that accept inserts, and the dealers have stocked them, so they have been available for the life of that model.

BUT.... the dealers have typically wanted an absurd amount of money for the inserts... i.e. as much or more than the cost of a new set of Bosch wiper assemblies!

So most people just fit complete wiper assemblies; it is an area where design has improved over the years; modern wiper rubber profiles often have more lips (so ought to work better) and whether you like the look of them or not, some modern aero designs shroud the rubber part to some extent and this may well help slow down the inevitable degradation of the rubber.

However said aero designs do concern me re. the uniformity of the pressure on the blade; it seems to me that they may not follow the curve of some windscreens very well.

Any place where it rains much, having wipers that work well is a vital safety feature. Any place where you get freeze-thaw conditions, most folk would really welcome a wiper blade that wasn't so flimsy that it threatens to tear when it is frozen to the windscreen, too....

BTW the standard E24 wipers are 450mm (18") long; I have used longer wipers than this and they may work OK on many E24 without fouling, it depends on how the arms are set exactly. When reverting to 18" inserts the reduction in the viewable area seems significant to me.

Cheap inserts (in the modern style with a square section to the base, which can be fitted to Bosch arms with a little effort) often seem to last about a year before they perish, so may be a false economy.

A final comment is that wiper design (on many cars E24 included) is just stupid anyway; the blade in front of the passenger pushes a load of water into the view of the driver, and then the driver's side blade pushes it back the other way again. This can go on and on for miles, often you can see the same crud getting shuffled back and forth repeatedly.

It would surely be a better idea if the wiper arms were positioned/timed so that crud in the middle of the windscreen was cleared away instead of being shuffled? I have an idea that to do this effectively, a cycle that ( as well as sweeping both blades into the centre of the screen at the same time) repeats every two wipes (instead of every wipe) might work best, thus allowing the centre of the screen to be cleared alternately to the left and the right sides.

cheers

[DRPM635CSi]

BTW the stiffeners are made of stainless steel.

Yeah that's the other name for the parts BMW won't sell you anymore

Here in the UK for decades car manufacturers have been supplying wiper arms that accept inserts, and the dealers have stocked them, so they have been available for the life of that model.

BUT.... the dealers have typically wanted an absurd amount of money for the inserts... i.e. as much or more than the cost of a new set of Bosch wiper assemblies!

Yep, down here in the land where we ram-raid steal Roger Water's old Ferrari 365GTB/4 Daytona from a workshop and then set fire to it for kicks, the same is true.

So most people just fit complete wiper assemblies; it is an area where design has improved over the years; modern wiper rubber profiles often have more lips (so ought to work better) and whether you like the look of them or not, some modern aero designs shroud the rubber part to some extent and this may well help slow down the inevitable degradation of the rubber.

My brother has one of these modern cars with a whizz-bang modern aerodynamic wiper system which is all soft and curvy and flexible and hides under the bonnet out of the airstream. It's on his Ford Mondeo and it's the loudest, most god-awful sounding system I've experienced in any car, ever. He says the wipers are great and completely silent when brand new but as soon there's even the slightest bit of dirt on the screen they have to clean off, they instantly become unbearable. The longest he's ever had the wipers working silently is two weeks from brand new. I'd much rather have old-school wipers that don't annoy me until they split and shred and cease to move water anymore, and slow down a bit when it rains if they're not perfectly brilliant at cleaning the screen, than have modern wipers that are so loud you can't listen to the radio or carry on a conversation with them switched on. Honestly they are that bad. Any new passenger in the car will comment on how loud they are when you switch them on. It's embarrassing to drive in the rain. He took it to the dealer he bought it from for advice and was just told "Oh yeah, they all do that. Only thing you can do is replace the blades. We have them in stock if you like, they're only $60". He did that once, it lasted for 2 weeks. Now he just lives with the noise. If he lived in England, I dare say he'd be selling the car over the issue, but out here it doesn't rain enough for that.

Any place where it rains much, having wipers that work well is a vital safety feature. Any place where you get freeze-thaw conditions, most folk would really welcome a wiper blade that wasn't so flimsy that it threatens to tear when it is frozen to the windscreen, too....

Well, you say that, but I did a classic car rally in a 1973 chrome bumper MGB-GT in the South Is of New Zealand a couple of years ago. It rains there plenty. Like Scotland plenty and the wipers on that car make the ones on an E24 look like they're from the future, yet I had no problem with them. I slowed down when it was necessary to be able to see better.

BTW the standard E24 wipers are 450mm (18") long; I have used longer wipers than this and they may work OK on many E24 without fouling, it depends on how the arms are set exactly. When reverting to 18" inserts the reduction in the viewable area seems significant to me.

I recently had to lube the timing plate contacts inside my wiper motor to correct the stuttering problem and so I'm familiar with where the blades reach to at their extremities. At full sweep up (TDC if you like), the RHD car's driver's side blade tip is within 1cm of actually being in contact with the windscreen glass rubber seal surround. When I moved it one spline down on the motor spindle, the rest position (BDC if you like) put it resting fully on the lower middle windscreen surround rubber seal and looking very odd because it was nowhere near being horizontal at parked/rest position. There is absolutely no way you could fit anything longer than the stock 450mm wiper blade inserts without either major modification of other parts or accepting the blades wiping well outside of the limits of the windscreen glass.

A final comment is that wiper design (on many cars E24 included) is just stupid anyway

A single central mono-wiper that sweeps through 180° is the cool kids way forward, like the racing cars, and having it park over on the passenger side. Unfortunately such a mod requires some pretty serious modification and fabrication work, so is not really in my future I'm afraid.

[Brucey]

I've been using longer wipers for years and they work fine; I guess if your splines are already set a particular way then maybe you can't use them (sometimes swapping the arms left for right helps...). Anyway, if you live somewhere dry, then why bother...?

But also note that a static test does not tell you exactly how the wipers will move when the car is going down the road; it may look as if the wipers are going to touch the windscreen surround (and they may even park thus) but the mechanism has a little lash in it and when the car is going down the road the wind loading tends to keep the blades clear of the surround.

BTW there is nothing wrong with the wipers on an MGB... but like many cars of that make/era, the wipers are driven by a cable drive. I have once had a drive of that kind break (in torrential rain, obviously) and (past a loop of string through the passenger compartment for 'manual wiper operation') there is no roadside fix for that one, only a new cable will do. Afterwards I realised that the part had probably done over 200000 miles so I didn't feel so bad about it letting go, but it was no fun there for a while.

cheers