Still in it. 

I mentioned in This Post some time ago, about how expensive wiper blades were for my Mercedes.  A little update:  It turned out I didn’t need to replace the blades I had on there just then after all.  The streaking I saw was due to some dirt and once I cleaned it off the blades resumed their excellent job. So I saved the spare blades I’d just bought, keeping them in the trunk as backups.  I only just now had to, finally, replace the factory blades.  This is almost a year and a half after I took delivery on the car.  I’m very impressed.  Those factory blades got a lot of use.

If it seems like I’m completely geeking out here I beg to differ.  Wiper blades are one of those little items nobody really thinks about that actually play a critical safety role.  Most of the time these little plastic and rubber items sit tucked away behind the hood and you forget they’re there until it starts raining or some car in front of you kicks some water mixed with dirt or road salt onto your windshield.  When you need them they’d better work. 

One of my pet peeves ever since I got my first car is how little thought the car makers, until very recently it seems, were putting into something as critical as keeping the damn windshield clean while you’re driving.  Wiper arms and blades back when I was a teenager in the 70s, and for most of the 80s and 90s too, were just these crappy little afterthoughts that did the job just well enough but never really all that good.  And you were lucky if you got more then a few months out of a set of blades before they started streaking on you.  Usually right at eye level.

When I bought my Mercedes I thought a couple odd little blade-like items that had been stuffed in the back pocket of the front passenger seat were a set of spare wiper blades, and I was impressed by the thoughtfulness.  But it turns out, at least for ‘C’ class customers, Mercedes isn’t that generous.  Those little things weren’t spare blades after all.  I still have no idea what they are…I keep forgetting to ask the parts guys at my dealer about them.  But when I found I didn’t need to replace the factory blades last March as I’d thought, I kept the pair I’d just bought in the trunk as backups.  It’s a good idea to keep a spare set handy.

I only now had to, finally, replace the factory installed blades.  The Mercedes blades come out of the box bent like a bow, and their tops are shaped like an airfoil to hold the blades firmly against the glass at highway speeds.  Replacing the old ones is a snap.  You just tilt up the arms and then tilt the blades 90 degrees from the shaft and they just slide right off.  Slide the new ones on, tilt forward, place the arms back down…done.  Less then three minutes and part of that was double-checking the instruction manual while I did it.  As is typical on this car, everything fits together right.  There is no fussing with any of it.  The parts fit together like they’re supposed to.

I tried the new blades out with a few washer squirts.  The sound these things make is like a whisper gliding over glass.  I have never seen wipers work as smoothly or as thoroughly as these.  It may seem like a small thing but all winter long last year and this traffic in front of me has kicked water and road salt onto my car and all I notice now is that my hood gets dirty and the car needs a wash.  The blades are long and one arm is articulated and between them nearly all the windshield is kept perfectly clean.  I’ve almost forgotten what it was like to have to squint through my windshield all winter long. 

God forbid the economy ever gets so bad and I loose my job and I have to sell everything, including the car.  But if that day ever comes, swear to god I’ll go buy a used Mercedes with whatever I can cobble together, no matter how many miles it has on it, and drive that.  Probably not anything made when they were having quality control problems, say between the late 90s and early 2000s.  But I am not driving anything that doesn’t have that three pointed star on it anymore.  I’m just not.  I sincerely regret now, not buying a used one back when I could afford a car again.  I’d have had one to enjoy for so much more of my life then I did, because I stubbornly held out for new.  It’s not the status value.  It’s the engineering.  It’s the satisfaction of driving something made by people who put some real thought into how a car should work and made it as well as they could.  A friend said this car would change my idea of what normal is.  Yes it has.  Oh yes.