Spring is in the air, the sun is shining, and the last thing on your mind is your windshield wipers. But this is exactly the time when you should be thinking about replacing your windshield wipers.
Throughout the winter, your windshield wipers worked their little blades off, clearing snow, rain, hail and road gunk off your windshield. And now they are probably a little tired and worn out, leaving streaks and no longer able to give you that crystal clear vision they once did. As we get ready for summer wheeling (and who isn’t excited about that), changing out our windshield wipers is one of those maintenance items on our check list.
A quick Google search will return you lots of choices, so we turned to our friend Beau Jaramillo over at Amsoil and he sent us Trico’s Neoform Beam Blade. These are their highest-performing blades with single beam construction offering an infinite number of blade pressure points that keeps a constant, even pressure across the entire length of the wiper. All that pressure translates into a smoother, more consistent wipe across the windshield. They even have a Teflon coating for longer life. The NeoForm blades’ aerodynamic spoiler design helps keep the blade on the windshield, even in high wind or vehicle speeds… Not that our FJ Cruiser is breaking the sound barrier.
Our FJ Cruiser requires three windshield wipers, one 16″ blade in front of the driver and two smaller 14″ blades keeping the center and passenger side of the windshield clean. The windshield blades connect to the arms using a hook style attachment (other rigs my use a different attachment style). Changing your windshield wipers is easy and can be done rain or shine in about five minutes.
Remove the old windshield wiper. It should have a small tab that will release it from the arm and allow you to slide the old wiper off the arm.
Push the Trico wiper adapter latch open, lifting it up.
Slide the arm end through the latch opening and pull the blade back onto the arm’s hook to lock it in place.
Close the adapter latch and you done.
Sound complicated? Here is a 60 second video that will show you how easy it is: Trico Install Video
Now when we run into rain, mud or trail dust, our new blades will wipe it clean, instead of just pushing the water back and forth.
We live in the northwest so of course it rained within a few hours of installing the new wipers… And how did they perform? Highway driving in a good downpour, no streaks or wet spots. The view remained crystal clear!