allenw@icsgroup.com

Sorry for the repost, but I wanted to change the topic Title

I love this stuff. Use it on my fleet. But, I used it on my
85-C4 windshield the first time about a month ago.
For years the wiper blades had never crashed, tangled, or
touched while in any conditions. Sense I've had such fun
with RainX on all my other cars I though it was time to
treat the C4. The very next day we had one of our few
rain storms where it rained for more than a hour.
I had a job to do about 60 miles away. As I
turned on the wipers for the first time with the treatment
in the rain I noticed the wipers where "stuttering"
Stuttering= pausing and then moving forward again.
Because the wiper linkage is warn by now on the 85
the stuttering caused the arms to jump forward a bit with
the built up torque in the assembly. This extra push,
if at the point of intersection of the other wiper, would
cause the blade tips to go just a half inch father than normal.
Well you know how close the intersection is with out a extra
half inch so I started getting wiper crashes. At one point I was
in a rain storm going 50mph on a crowed California freeway
full of weekend drivers going Christmas shopping. Half of them
must take public transportation to work. I was scared xxx - expletive!
I was geting some crashes of the blade tips when all of a sudden
the two tips locked themself together. The torque made the
two arms and blades jump out and away from the windshield.
The two arms and blades looks like they where doing some
sort of sword fight dance one foot out in front of the windshield.
I was already scared this wiper dance took me into the fear zone.
By turning off the wipes motor the wiper dance mess would clear up.
I begin not to see so well, so on with the wipers. Stutter, stutter, stutter,
crash, stutter, stutter, crash, dance, power off motor. I got
home and just sat there. I'm thinking what just happened.
The blades had worked for years and just last week all was ok.
Da, I remembered what had changed.
Easy, I'll just untreat the windshield and see what happens.
By then I found that I could reproduce the crash dance problem in the driveway using the garden hose to simulate rain on the windshield.
I knew from past experience that no solvent would get this treatment off.
So I went to their web page to get a phone number to get Tec help
and found to my surprise that there was a number and a FAQ area.
What the heck I'll look at their FAQ area. There was only one FAQ.
"How to get XXX off windshield!" That was encouraging , other people
have had stuttering problems also. The FAQ described how to get it off
but I called their Tec number anyway. The Tec described exactly my problem
and they use the word "Stuttering" for the condition. He stated the cause is to much of the treatment. All I had to do is remove some of it.
(After one single application caused me to have to much is subject
to opinion. )

How to get it off:
Their web page suggest two scratching abrasive products.
The only way is to scratch it of, no solvent is suggested. I used both abrasives but was disappointed with using the first. I still had stuttering and crashing after two applications of the first product. I then hunted down the other product an found it definitely worked better. After using the second product two times the stuttering was gone and the wiperblades made/make a smooth motion across the windshield now, just like before. It could be that it would take four complete treatments of the Feldspar containing product to get it done. I might have got some or most off with the first product but I stopped at the two elbow grease intensive application. Maybe the two products worked together with a total of four grinding passes,
but I think the Feldspar containing product applied with elbow grease 4 times will do the trick.

Be careful, the Feldspar product comes in a cleanser with the same color package.
You want the harder to find "Cleaning Powder" about $1.25 at hardware stores.

I love RainX and use it on all my side and rear windows.

I believe the above statements are true and the controlled conditions
leads be to believe that the out come is true as well.

allen


[Modified by allenw@icsgroup.com, 11:27 PM 1/10/2003]

92TripleBlack

The wiper "Swordfight" is fairly common. GM fixed this in late '95 by modifying the wiper arms and blades. The problem was probably aggrivated by the rainx. I would get '96 arms and blades. This would end your problems. :thumbs:

Richard G

I went to 18 inch blades. Solved my problem of fighting blades. At NAPA they cost $4.23. My 94 came with 20 inchers.

HiRiser

ROFL twice over :lol: Great post