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Piston Slap: What About the Wiper Blade Refill?
Vince writes:
Does anybody replace just the rubber wiper blade anymore? I always replaced the rubber blade; not the entire ‘carriage’ or whatever the blade-holding contraption is called. (Apparently the term we need to discuss is Wiper Blade Refill. – SM) But it’s gotten more difficult from a sourcing perspective.
It seems that time has changed; just as now the oil change on your Porsche is expected to cost several hundred dollars, people have been led to believe that it’s too difficult to change the rubber blade and should replace the entire assembly for 4x or 5x the cost.
Sajeev answers:
Thank you for asking this, Vince! Your email and a handful of comments on my Piston Slap about replacement wiper blades notes that I didn’t cover the topic of wiper blade refills. That is a shortcoming we will address now, as wiper blade refills still exist…but they are significantly harder to purchase.
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Even Trico, the most prominent maker of refills on the market, wants to sell the classic car owner a new wiper blade that looks like an old one. Perhaps they can get away with it, as decades of retailing replacement wiper blades conditioned us to seek a replacement blade without even looking for the refill.
So yes, you can still order wiper blade refills. Sadly, the onus is now on the consumer to research the brands, the part numbers that apply to your vehicle, and the retailers willing to sell them to you. I have yet to find an employee at a parts counter who can successfully source wiper refills for my vehicle, but hopefully what I learned can how help you, dear reader.
Trico sells a wide variety of replacement refills, so click the link in this sentence to see which part works for your application. I suspect Trico’s Series 44 works for the vast majority of readers, as it has the old-school metal clip at one end to “lock” itself into a wiper blade. (The photo at the top of this story shows the metal clip in detail, as I bought Series 44s in bulk a few years ago.)
There’s one final problem: do you still have a wiper blade that accepts a refill? I saw the “transition from refills to blades” firsthand, so I fear every vehicle that isn’t a barn find or a museum piece lost their factory wiper blades. Take a close look at your blade, because the rubber refill is probably locked into the chassis. Sometimes it is visibly crimped together, but no matter how they did it, I reckon you are stuck in the replacement wiper blade ecosystem.
Throwing away factory wiper blades in the 1990-00s seemed like the right move when I was younger. But after writing this Piston Slap and reflecting on how my old beaters became cherished classics, I’d pay a lot to turn back the clock and have wiper blades with replaceable refills. I am no fan of being locked into an ecosystem of paying more money for even more land waste. I suspect I am not the only person who feels this way.
Perhaps readers of Hagerty Media know a workaround, a way to make a new wiper blade work like an old one with replaceable refills. If so, I am all ears. And I am sure I am not the only one looking for enlightenment.
Have a question you’d like answered on Piston Slap? Send your queries to pistonslap@hagerty.com—give us as much detail as possible so we can help! Keep in mind this is a weekly column, so if you need an expedited answer, please tell me in your email.
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I have the original blade with refills on my 85 Pontiac. They were bade wit solid tabs but you can Ben them and slide in a new blade.
The real trouble today is finding refills that has steel blade holders. Many are plastic and are junk.
To make sone of these refills work you need to do a little engineering too. The basic driver often does not have the time, patience or know how to make them work.
Also today there are few service stations that work on cars. You can buy beer and lottery tickets but not wipers to see.
Forget about refills! What drives me even crazier is that because of a proprietory blade to arm fitting I have to use a Porsche brand windshield wiper replacement on my newer car. And even though OEM and AUDI blades will match in size and quality at about half the cost, I cannot defeat that connector without major surgery.
I tried a well known brand after market set on my GMC truck years ago. They came with several “adapter parts” to be a one fits all product and attach to any make or model vehicle. The slop from the adapters let them flop back and forth and made noticeable noise in use. Returned them and ordered a set of the OEM blades that worked like new and no noise. I only buy direct fit OEM style replacements anymore.
Sajeev, I see that I didn’t correctly address in my original post what you asked at the end of your article. I have looked at replacing just inserts on our newer vehicles and found no practical way to do so. The time it would take to do it plus the cost of the refills is not justified when I can buy good OEM “style” replacements for $12 a set last me three or more years. I really dislike having to throw out whole blade assemblies when only the inserts need replaced.
Thanks for bringing that up, as I didn’t consider newer cars in my quest for refills. I assumed the world has passed us by, ensuring refills were impossible to find for 0-15 year old cars. Sounds like I might be right!
This story is about the older cars not the new cars.
I do use the OE style blades on my modern cars.
I went to a Ford dealer to get refills for my 2021 Lincoln Aviator as the blades have the washer nozzles built in. The parts guy said they just replace the whole blade. I ask him to look again as I knew they were available. He finnaly found them and they work like a charm. But …. the pair of refills cost about $50. Just think how much the whole blade would have cost.
Yikes!
Save those part numbers and buy online next time. They will be cheaper.
Hahahaha – that’s funny. Somebody thinks things are gonna be “cheaper” in the future…
Oh no, I didn’t mean that. I just meant it will be cheaper at any point to buy wiper blades (or refills, in this case) online than it will be to buy them from a brick and mortar establishment.
(Though everyone’s comments about Costco gives me pause, too bad I am not a member.)
Don’t worry about lacking a Costco membership. They deal in quantity, so it’s likely they sell wiper blades in packs of 100.
Costco blades are sold individually, but they are Goodyear brand, and don’t last as long as some others. I usually only get a year or so out of most brands.
I used to slip in wiper blades in 5 minutes or less! 50 Chev, 54 Ford, 50 Plymouth, 58 Plymouth, 69 VW Carma Giah and even a 74 Saab Sonnet! Oh how I wish I had them all in a garage today! Took me over an hour to figure out which multi vehicle clip worked on my 2018 GMC! One came off in a snow storm. Boy do zip ties work great!
Anyone have to change a Tesla truck wiper? Not one you will find at Walmart. It must be 40″ + long.
Having tinkered with the wiper for my Vellum Venom on the CT, you are right. Anyone who plans on keeping on of these for the long term better keep several spares, because those will be about as hard to find in the future as metric Michelin tires.
I thought we went through all this in an earlier article. The vast majority of wiper blade sales are made to people who haven’t a clue as to how to install them. They are installed by the counter people at your local O’Reilly’s-Advance-Auto Zone who likewise haven’t a clue. But the parts store people figure it out quickly and can swap out a set of blades in about 2 minutes. The proliferation of attachment hardware makes it a pain sometimes and I sympathize with the “poor” Porsche driver or other German car owner who has to go to the dealer for blades.
Most of the kvetching about the expense sounds like a bunch of bored old men with nothing to do and all day to do it.
Hey, Sajeev….
Any worries about the shelf life of the old-fashioned inserts? I bought a whole bunch of them for my Old Toyota 12 years ago when I bought the car and was wondering if they’d “age out” before I used them.
– Jim
So far no issues putting new-in-box inserts on my 1971 Mark III. I did this during the pandemic, drove it in the rain last year and it wiped like a new car. I keep the spares in my home (i.e. air conditioning) now to ensure they will last forever…or so my experience leads me to believe!
The first time I changed blades on my ’61 E-100, I bought blades the correct length off the rack at an Auto Zone and removed the housing to create an insert. That worked well enough, but it was a lot of work; I did that simply to be able to keep using the original housings. The next time I needed blades, I went to Trico, found the correct insert, and bought two pair. I also put small blocks of wood under the arms to keep the blades off the windshield when the van is parked. So far, so good.
Those of you who own Fords or Mercuries should check out Mac’s Auto Parts or Eckler’s. They have inserts and stock assemblies for many (though not all) cars and trucks. When shopping, stay aware that Ford used the same parts for many of their vehicles – if you don’t find that Mustang part you need, check the Falcon catalog and the truck catalogs and the Fairlane …..
Once upon a time (and up until a few years ago, O’Reillys had inserts–kept behind the counter–you had to ask for ’em. But not any more.
I still have the original blade holders on my BMW 2002s, and have been able to find inserts that work with ’em. Getting harder to find the 13″ inserts, though. My other “trick” is to buy complete blade assemblies cheaply at Ollies or a similar overstock store, and harvest the rubber inserts. If the stiffeners are plastic, I reuse the stainless steel stiffener from the old rubber.
Both Nissan and Toyota still sell rubber inserts for the wipers on our Frontier and RAV4. Like many Japanese vehicles, the stiffeners are two strips of stainless steel that are inserted in the rubber, then into the blades. A little tricky but do-able.
My Citroën SM needed wiper attention, and I hotfooted it down to O’Reilly’s for what I thought would be a no problem replacement. Wipers were metal Bosch16″, so found the size, paid, left, and proceeded through the hoped for replacement. First, there were 3 different plastic ends for the arm, which didn’t fit. Needed to study the instructions to see what and how installation was to be accomplished, and nothing fit! Took it back, and the clerk knowingly said that this was the “new style” and I needed the “J-hook” style. Traded for the J-hook (which was cheaper), went home and tried to get the new with the old, which didn’t work. Finally, peeled out the rubber blades and installed them into the original (to the car) holders, so they work fine now. The $64K question that I have now, is why do we have to keep “re-inventing the wheel”?? I guess that there’s more $$ to be made in frustrating the motoring public and making them pawns of the service industry.
Having OEM wipers on my Supra the refills are cheap and easy to purchase from Toyota.
Use refill inserts to save the Planet. Or some such.