AshSerigala
Member
- Thread starter
- #1
Well, It's winter time and I miss having hood-sprayers. It snows, thaws ( wet snow ), and freezes literally daily here. and my car lives outside. If I dont drive for a day or two, that melting snow compacts its way down the windshield and forms a hard ice-dam at the bottom. Come time to drive the car ( Wipers left up or wipers down ) I now have large 6-12+ inch chunks that break off the windshield pretty easily. Problem being, these plastic connectors are literally only 0.4mm thick plastic with tiny support ridges. SUPER fragile. So, naturally ice forms a complete connection around it and when a large chunk up my windshield broke loose, the entire connector+hose came with it.
The connector wasn't hard to remove. Typical plastic fastener tool popped it off with no effort. But the bigger issue was, my hose was super tight. You could JUST barely see the barb of the connector. Leaving no room to work. No room to put a torch/heater on it to soften things up. So I used a pliers, but that hose is so super hard ( Not squishy like the wiper hose ) that the barb wasnt gona pull out of it and hose basically ripped getting it off. Well. That hose I guess was cut short stock, as it didnt pull out enough put a new connector on. 100% can tell it was cut short and designed to be installed while the cowl is removed. AKA, Remove your cowl first. Lesson learned, figured I could access this externally but nope. Hose was far too short to pull through. I had hopes it would pull out like a inch or so at least but..nope. not even 5mm and that was before the end was broke.
That said, I had to pop clips on the cowl to reach my hand under and learned that whelp, those arent push clips. They're U shaped hooks built into the cowl, not made to pull-up on. So...That someday needs to be replaced I guess.
So because I had to feed it through behind ( Hose too short and didnt want to fully take the cowl off and risk breaking more clips ) -- You have to remove the wipers and everything too. I decided to pull the super short hose down under the cowl. Install the clip ( Cut the flange off ) and pushed it through from behind. This works enough to "fix the problem" and deal with it when its not winter. Because the problem is, the second this broke, my wipers became useless. There's no pressure in the line, and your fluid just gushes out the hose.Not a single drop came out the other wiper. So my wipers were completely useless and smeering dirt all over due to salt/dirt spray from other cars ahead. Wasn't the slightest bit safe to even consider a dealership drive 40-mins of highway with my head out the window or something nuts.
So... Problem is ""fixed"" as I got fluid on my windshield once again. But come spring thaw, I'll have to look into getting the cowl replaced. Seeing that my other wiper's connector is already bent from ice expanding, I started to make metal versions that'll just push & twist in. But yeah. Such a poor design. Every day I see ice fully encase that connector cuz of daily snow/thaw cycles. When I replace the cowl and such I 100% plan to put a longer hose on. As this woulda been a 10 second fix if the hose was long enough to pull-out of the hole. But it was cut so short you couldn't even expose more than 5mm of hose. The wiper side was easy. Little bit of torch and the hose just plucked off zero effort. popped onto the new one nice and firm. hassle free.
Curios if anyone else had this happen and if they were more lucky to have a longer hose. Or if you just remove the wipers + cowl, the proper..smarter way. xD Shi sucks. Modding cars is easy work then simple stuff like this becomes a task suddenly. Ripped tons of panels off, removed my bumper, fender, etc off for mods and a stupid washer fluid hose connector I can somehow rank worst-experience, removing the entire bumper is 500X easier somehow haha
The connector wasn't hard to remove. Typical plastic fastener tool popped it off with no effort. But the bigger issue was, my hose was super tight. You could JUST barely see the barb of the connector. Leaving no room to work. No room to put a torch/heater on it to soften things up. So I used a pliers, but that hose is so super hard ( Not squishy like the wiper hose ) that the barb wasnt gona pull out of it and hose basically ripped getting it off. Well. That hose I guess was cut short stock, as it didnt pull out enough put a new connector on. 100% can tell it was cut short and designed to be installed while the cowl is removed. AKA, Remove your cowl first. Lesson learned, figured I could access this externally but nope. Hose was far too short to pull through. I had hopes it would pull out like a inch or so at least but..nope. not even 5mm and that was before the end was broke.
That said, I had to pop clips on the cowl to reach my hand under and learned that whelp, those arent push clips. They're U shaped hooks built into the cowl, not made to pull-up on. So...That someday needs to be replaced I guess.
So because I had to feed it through behind ( Hose too short and didnt want to fully take the cowl off and risk breaking more clips ) -- You have to remove the wipers and everything too. I decided to pull the super short hose down under the cowl. Install the clip ( Cut the flange off ) and pushed it through from behind. This works enough to "fix the problem" and deal with it when its not winter. Because the problem is, the second this broke, my wipers became useless. There's no pressure in the line, and your fluid just gushes out the hose.Not a single drop came out the other wiper. So my wipers were completely useless and smeering dirt all over due to salt/dirt spray from other cars ahead. Wasn't the slightest bit safe to even consider a dealership drive 40-mins of highway with my head out the window or something nuts.
So... Problem is ""fixed"" as I got fluid on my windshield once again. But come spring thaw, I'll have to look into getting the cowl replaced. Seeing that my other wiper's connector is already bent from ice expanding, I started to make metal versions that'll just push & twist in. But yeah. Such a poor design. Every day I see ice fully encase that connector cuz of daily snow/thaw cycles. When I replace the cowl and such I 100% plan to put a longer hose on. As this woulda been a 10 second fix if the hose was long enough to pull-out of the hole. But it was cut so short you couldn't even expose more than 5mm of hose. The wiper side was easy. Little bit of torch and the hose just plucked off zero effort. popped onto the new one nice and firm. hassle free.
Curios if anyone else had this happen and if they were more lucky to have a longer hose. Or if you just remove the wipers + cowl, the proper..smarter way. xD Shi sucks. Modding cars is easy work then simple stuff like this becomes a task suddenly. Ripped tons of panels off, removed my bumper, fender, etc off for mods and a stupid washer fluid hose connector I can somehow rank worst-experience, removing the entire bumper is 500X easier somehow haha
