Yesterday it did just what was promised: Unseasonably cool with wandering storm cells in the afternoon. Hardly like the town-stomping downpours I’ve heard the Midwest got, hardly worth mentioning. I rushed my trip up the plateau yesterday afternoon when things got blustery because I didn’t want to get caught in another downpour without windshield wipers. But it didn’t do much more than drip a few times, then it cleared up nice.
Woke up half an hour ago to find it all grey and raining like crazy. Bother. On the other hand, enter silver lining: If it’s like this on the mesa I won’t have to haul as much water for the gardens.
Here it is the 8th of May and our forecast is for 4-15 inches of snow. A friend in the TX panhandle got baseball sized hail. Weird May.
Have you ever tried treating your windshield with Rain-X? When I have done so I barely used the windshield wipers (and didn’t really need them much even then). The only reason I don’t keep up with it like I used to is that it rains so rarely here. But when it’s in the forecast I sometimes remember and it’s really nice if rain happens.
Once I was on a long-distance trip and it started raining pretty hard. Suddenly all the cars on the interstate with me started braking and pulling off the road at odd angles. It dawned on me that no one else could see anything because it was raining so hard. And I could see perfectly through my freshly Rain-Xed windshield. That made a believer out of me.
If you do try it, don’t get it on any wiper blades you plan on using (makes them weird and streaky) and if the Rain-X starts wearing off after a month or so, either re-treat or hope you don’t get rain again until it’s completely gone– another weirdly streaky situation.
On the whole, if I didn’t have functional wipers, I’d use it regularly.
Joel, refresh out memories – does the motor on the wiper work if powered directly from the battery?
Or was it the switch stalk that failed pr the relay in the circuit?
If the latter, just hard wire a switch on the dash to control a new bolt on relay to turn on the wipers manually and bypass the rest. If a bad motor, let me know, plenty of scrapyards around here to “pick a part”
Terrapod, the best I can reply is that it behaves oddly. Occasionally I accidentally bump the switch so that it should only operate for one cycle – I’m having a brain fart on what that mode is called – and for the rest of the week I have to put up with the blades being in the middle of the windshield while they slowly, one bump at a time whenever the key is turned on, work their way through one cycle. So it’s as though the wipers activate only momentarily whenever the switch is turned on.
Rain-X is great except in light mist with an overhead streetlight which illuminates the entire windshield to the detriment of actually seeing the road. Otherwise, good stuff.
“Hardly like the town-stomping downpours I’ve heard the Midwest got,” which I read just after seeing today’s local newspaper headline “Heavy rain could cause mudslides, rockslides in southwest Wisconsin, officials warn”. Serendipity or sumthin’.
Joel: good luck on the wiper electrical issue.