Beware The Beach Might Degrade Your Wipers.

Everyone adores the coast with its myriad of unique experiences and sights so removed from our every day circumstances of living in a modern urban society. In many ways visits to the seaside illicit fantasies of a bygone era when times were easier and individuals couldn’t afford to travel abroad so they anchored at home to enjoy their holidays. Those days are long gone but there are still many of times when a holiday to the sea side is quite refreshing, although, like most things, there is a price to be paid. You see the salt in the seaside air has quite a detrimental affect on your car and the wiper blades are no exception. The salt is both highly alkaline and very hard and corrosive, these little devils can destroy paintwork and get trapped inside moving parts causing heinous abrasion and even scratching glass and paint. The high pH of salt is why the majority of plants fail to thrive at the coast and only special varieties like dunes survive; by ill hap this alkalinity is also responsible for degrading the rubber found on your wiper blades and any where else in or on your motor vehicle. The sand is also very pale and as such reflects a large proportion of the sun light hitting it, this ultra violet light is then often reflected at you or your car again hurting the delicate rubber wiper blades. Another hidden danger located at the beach is the high levels of ozone blown in from off the coast, this type of gas is fine for humans but is damaging to the soft rubber found in wiper blade and other car parts.

The salt particles act like sandpaper and rub away the rubber wipers until they become highly ineffective, the ozone digs deep inside these fissures causing problems from the inside out and the ultraviolet light causes the rubber to become stiff and lifeless. There is however a solution to all these things for any one living in coastal or desert regions or simply enjoys a trip to the beach every now and then. It’s ironic that a item found in sand, silicone, is itself the solution to the problem, silicone wipers are immune to all of the factors we have already explored. They have many great properties that make silicone an ideal wipers stuff, they are unaffected by salt, ozone, and ultra violet light and as a result have an enormous life span when compared to everyday rubber windscreen wipers.

For this reason they represent great value for money and only cost marginally more than premium rubber replacement wiper blades but last much longer. Standard rubber replacement wiper blades are only good for around one hundred thousand cycles; silicone replacement wiper blades however are workable for millions of cycles. Another thing you can do to reduce the damage caused by the coastal environment is by buying some flat replacement wiper blades; these have no moving parts and therefore are immune to the wear and tear caused by sand abrasion. In addition, they can be swapped with silicone replacement wiper blades inserts to produce a totally winning combination at the beach. The single joint-fewer frames will not succumb to the corrosion experienced by basic replacement wiper blades sweeping arms and as a result last much longer.