bc6152

After washing and waxing my car I went into the interior and wiped down the dash, console, seats, and instrument panel. Thinking I was finished inside I wanted to clean the outer windscreen. To do this withe wipers moved away from the glass the above procedure must be followed. Unfortunately the w/s was dry from the sun and debris had landed on the glass. What it was, I don't know. I started the car, let it run for a minute, turned it off and pushed the wiper stalk up within 45 seconds. BINGO! I now have a half moon line scored into the glass. Of course it's also on the driver's side. I went to an auto glass repair facility to see if it could be removed and the tech stated that the repair might be worse than the damage. By rubbing the line with rouge or compound it can create smears when driving at night from oncoming headlights. So I live with it.

If Lexus, with their great wisdom and smart engineers had designed the wipers like 90% of the other manufacturers and made it so the wipers could simply be pulled outwards for cleaning, this damage IMO would not have occurred. I ranted about this previously and had no plans to continue. I'm merely answering your question David. I promise - no more wiper complaints after this...

DavidZ

Thanks, bc. That's helpful information and a cautionary tale. Make me paranoid about cleaning my wipers. Or at least to be very careful before putting the wipers in the cleaning position.

It sounds to me like the damage was caused by debris rather than dryness. I'm not sure whether wetting it down first would have prevented the scratch if the debris was lodged in a particular way.