rev up your engines
today I'm going to talk about the best wiper blades and why they are the best
wiper blades, welcome to mechanic Monday, and as usual
I'm telling you the truth about stuff, no one's sponsoring this except the
truth, I've tried out various types of wiper blades over the years, and I've
come to one conclusion, the best wiper blades are silicone wiper blades and to
understand why, here's a history lesson, in 1903 Mary Anderson invented the car
wiper blade, now the original wiper blades are made of natural rubber, which
whites water off pretty good, but it's got one major disadvantage, in the heat
and the Sun, the rubber deteriorates relatively quickly, and then you got to
buy another blade, so then later they came out with synthetic rubber blades
and added some graphite to the mix to make them last longer, but the graphite
sometimes makes noise, if you notice when you're driving and it's just the light
rain, a lot of times you hear these noises, that's the graphite kind of
rubbing on your windshield and make a noise, but then they came out with
silicone wiper blades years ago, they did cost a lot more a long time ago, because
they were kind of not mass-produced all that much, but today because a lot less
than they used to, they still might cost twice as much, but hey they can last four,
five, six, ten times longer than the rubber ones do, I don't have the car
anymore, but I used to have a 1981 Toyota Corolla sr5 and I put a set of silicone
wiper blades on it, and after ten years they were still the same blades and they
still wiped good, silicone is just a stronger longer-lasting material, years
ago, I put a silicone valve cover gasket on my Toyota here, which originally came
with a rubber gasket, but when I found out these silicone ones are supposed to
last longer, I put in a silicone one, now I had to change the old rubber valve cover
gaskets every three four or five years, they would start leaking, but the silicone
ones been in there for more than ten years and it's still not leaking, so it's
still a better material, now the main enemies of wiper blades are ultraviolet
rays of the Sun, heat, and dirt in our atmosphere
it destroys rubber much faster than it destroys silicon, and silicon wiper
blades have an added benefit, as they wipe they actually leave little
residues of silicone, which is waterproof and it actually makes your wipers work
better over time, instead of worse like rubber that leaves deposits that make it
harder to wipe, now of course to make them last as long as they can, you want
to keep your windshield relatively clean, because dirt creates friction and
that's going to wear out even silicon blades over time, but the silicon blades
hey another reason they last longer is, they retain their pliability longer than
the rubber do, and they can handle extremes of temperatures better than the
rubber can too, so if you live in a really hot place, or you live in a really
cold place, these silicone wiper blades they're going to last longer and work
better then rubber ones are, a few years back I went to an auto parts store, and I
went to the manager and said you know I've been trying out these silicone
blades they work pretty good, how come you guys don't sell them here, and the
manager, who was no fool, said Scotty we sell thousands of rubber wiper blades
every month in the store, if we were to sell silicone wiper blades over time our
sales would just go down to almost nothing, so you might have to search
around a little to find good silicone wiper blades, but with the internet
and amazon, 2-day free shipping, you can find it just about anywhere and have
them sent to your house, and since this is a mechanic's Monday, I'm giving away a
set of silicone wiper blades, to have a chance to win, just put a clean non
offensive comment in the YouTube comments below, and a computer will randomly pick
a winner, so if you never want to miss another one
of my new car repair videos, remember to ring that Bell!