Fall and winter arrive for many in the northern hemisphere bringing rain, snow, mud, and slush. The messy concoction makes for some of the most dangerous driving conditions, making the roads slick and windshields dirty. The crew at Garage 54 has a solution to quickly combat dirty windows – super-fast windshield wipers.
The hardware running everything is pretty simple. The wipers are attached to a Bosch cordless drill strapped to the engine bay fender wall with zip ties. It’s basic, but it works, allowing Garage 54 to set an appropriate wiper speed and operate the modified blades from inside the vehicle.
Garage 54 puts the revved-up windshield wipers through a series of tests. The first few spray water onto the windshield as the blades whip back and forth across the glass. It’s a bit of a poor test, not truly demonstrating the wipers’ capabilities.
The second round of testing is much more rigorous and involves throwing a bucket of dirty water onto the windshield. This simulates a passing vehicle hitting a puddle and splashing water onto the Lada’s glass, and the wipers work superbly. The blades ferociously whip back and forth, quickly clearing the windshield and improving visibility. No wiper setup is perfect, but when traveling down the road, a few seconds can translate into driving dozens or hundreds of feet without proper visibility, and that’s dangerous.
There is one drawback to the modified blades, though. They can’t swing back and forth too quickly because they begin to leave the surface of the windshield if they do. The force of the whipping motion back and forth pulls the blade away from the windshield, which defeats the whole purpose of the super-fast wipers.
The wipers installed on modern cars are great at handling whatever Mother Nature throws at them. Cars can now sense when their windshields are wet and activate the wipers on their own, with enough variable speeds to remove any gunk.
With winter right around the corner, now is probably a good time to check your wipers and replace them as necessary while topping off the windshield washer fluid. Or you can take inspiration from Garage 54 and add super-fast wipers to your car.
