newFitOwner

I have a beef about my otherwise wonderful Honda Fit. The wiping pattern of the wipers is such that there is always a residual trickle of windshield fluid right above the driver. How?

Picture the swath of area that is wiped by the driver side wiper, which roughly forms a semicircle. Let's call that the driver side semi-circle.

Now picture the passenger side wiper at the end of its upswing, which puts it almost right above the driver's head. Insidiously, the tip pokes *above* the semicircle that is wiped by the driver side wiper.

When the passenger side wiper swings down, it leaves wiper fluid bunched up above the driver side semicircle, and above the driver's head. In other words, the wiper fluid is not wiped away by the driver side wiper. It then starts to trickle down the drivers field of view. Pretty freaking annoying.

So what can you do? Swoosh the wiper again, which clears away the trickle momentarily, but adds to the remaining fluid above the driver's head. The residual fluid then starts trickling down again.

You can keep swooshing the wiper to your hearts content, but there will always be more fluid bunched up above the driver's head than there is spread out over the wiping area. Eventually, the there is so little fluid on the windshield that anymore swooshing leads to smearing, but there is still plenty of trickle-able fluid above the driver's head.

So you spray a bit more fluid and start the cycle all over again. In other words, to avoid that trickle, you keep spraying and swooshing, even though there may be no slush being sprayed on your windshield. You soon empty out your windshield fluid reservoir.

If you try to maintain a respectable speed in an attempt to dry off the fluid before it can trickle down much, it's an invitation for an accident. And it almost never works in city driving situations -- too many slowdowns and stops. Plus, you're always keeping an eye on the bunched up fluid rather than on the road.

You can blast the windshield with hot air hoping to dry off the fluid before it trickles much, but I need to play with that a bit more (in conjuction with maintaining a constant respectable speed as much as possible) to get it to work. Haven't yet, so far.

This sounds like a trivial problem, but it's fundamentally flawed design. I hope that I am not the only person running into this. Not that I want others to be annoyed, but I figure that if it's an endemic problem, perhaps there is a readily available modification. Like a differently angled wiper arm for the passenger side.

claymore

You do know the sprayers can be adjusted for where they spray right? It takes less time to adjust them than it took you to write that post.

newFitOwner

That's nice to know for future reference, Claymore, but the spray pattern isn't that relevant to the problem. As long as the wiper motion is as I described, the problem seems to be unavoidable. I'm hoping that I'm wrong about this, and that there is a trick that others have discovered and that I'm overlooking. Otherwise, it'll be 10-15 years of this.

I'd actually be interested if anyone else notices this pattern with the wipers. Honda fits can't be that different, so unless someone vandalized my wipers without my noticing it (and without otherwise affecting its operation), it should be affecting lots of people.

I'm hoping that I explained it well enough. In case I didn't, let me try again, hopefully better. Imagine one cycle of the driver side wiper. The fluid is squeegeed to the left edge of the windshield, then flows down along the left edge. Now imagine the same squeegee effect of the passenger side wiper, except that the squeegeed fluid forms a line, the top of which is above the driver's head. Since a portion of that line of fluid is above the area that is wiped by the driver side wiper, that portion of the fluid is not wiped away by the driver side wiper. If you turn off the wipers, that fluid trickles down the centre of the driver's field of view. So you have to keep wiping, because you have to keep wiping, you have to keep spraying. Even when there no road grime to clean. You soon empty out your windshield fluid.

I can't imagine how this wouldn't be immediately noticeable in any stage of trial and testing. Even if it wasn't, I can't understand how consumers wouldn't have noticed in the first years of the Fit being available. It doesn't seem like it would be technically difficult to fix at the design level.

Maybe it's because I'm in a winter climate. Lots of road slush and crud. Even so, however, there are plenty of Fits up here, so I wouldn't imagine that it would go unnoticed and unaddressed. Very odd that something so noticeable hasn't been, well, noticed (at least not that I could find).

manxman

The driver side wiper blade is about 1-1/2" too short on GE8 Fits. The untouched top area of glass allows water to collect and the air stream going over the windshield allows the water to stay there until the the air flow lessens as the vehicle speed drops, then gravity allows the pooled water to flow down onto the glass in front of the driver. IMO, it a a slight design flaw from Honda, but not severe enough for me to complain about it.

On other vehicles I owned with similar problems, an application of Rain-X exterior glass treatment solved the minor problem- water would not collect above the reach of the wiper due to the slippery surface from the Rain-X. However, the Rain-X takes too much time and effort for me to use it on my Fit. I just put up with the collected water above the wiper blade. But, I don't have your snow and slush to put up with here in Central Coast, CA. If I had those conditions, I would use the Rain-X, available at most auto parts stores, Amazon, and eBay. Good luck!

newFitOwner

OK, thanks. I'll keep that in mind.

I'm finding a delicate trick, just perfecting it. Wait until the pool of fluid dribbles its heart out, leaving an ugly track, then slightly spray, then wipe once. If you over spray, you're back at square one.

I'm wondering if it might be the salt and sand here. The surface of the car is just a cake of grime, and any fluid simply moves the grime around. Except for the sheen surface after a windshield wipe.

mr_RogerWill

Bump for a solution!

I've noticed this problem too, and I used the "drive faster" method to rid of the trickle..hoping theres an actual fix for this