Public Servant Lifestyle

There are a couple of devices on the modern car that were once listed as extras but are now accepted as absolutely essential. Windshield washers and rear defrosters - for example - are now considered vital equipment. But what other kit is lurking in the average motor vehicle?

Wipers

Wiper blades should be replaced every six months and the new all-season plastic types fitted.

Some cars and trucks are equipped with a little hose that runs up to the wiper blade in an effort to place windshield washer fluid where it can do the most good. Very soon, we will start to see clients complaining that these hose-style devices are not working.

Sometimes this turns out to be nothing more complicated than the use of water all summer long that has now frozen solid in the pipe. In other cases, however, the owner has been using the proper fluid and still the pipes are blocked with ice.

What happens is that since washer fluid is hardly more than methanol (wood alcohol) mixed with water and some colouring agent, the alcohol evaporates in the tube and leaves the water behind. Since the tube is exposed to high chill factors when the car is moving, it freezes rapidly.

Alcohol

It has been found that adding another litre of alcohol to the original mixture pretty well prevents this from happening, once the car has been warmed up in the garage. Another problem that stems from forgetting that there is only water in the washer bottle, is that the bottle itself freezes solid, splits open, and can be very expensive to replace.

So-called universal washer pumps work in most cases and are very inexpensive. However, it is always worth calling for a dealer for a price; they can sometimes surprise us with a special offer.

Wiper blades should be replaced every six months and the new all-season plastic types work well in both summer and winter. Using booster springs to increase blade pressure will eventually cost you a wiper motor, as will the use of multiple blade wipers.

Wobbly wiper spindles can be expensive to repair, but are cheaper than replacing the whole wiper linkage. A few spots of oil on these spindles just where they appear from the bodywork in front of the windshield will pay off handsomely in the long run.

Defroster

If your rear defroster loses one or two lines, it can be repaired using a special paint that contains a small number of conductive metal particles. A lot of the defroster lines are not buried in the glass; rather they are on the interior surface of the glass, so don't scrape frost off your back window with a scraper blade.

If the defroster isn't working at all, it can be easily checked for conductivity. If no power is available, it is likely the timer/control switch that is defective. A defroster uses a lot of power, so if the fuse is blown, it will probably blow again as soon as it is replaced... and then the short circuit will have to be found.

If you drive a vehicle with dark-tint glass and use a hand-held cell-phone all the time, you probably don't care whether you can see where you're going or not. But for the rest of us, good visibility is an essential element in surviving the challenges of winter driving.

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