I brought you a public service announcement aimed at combating waste: if your wiper is broken, you don’t have to replace your entire arm. In fact, doing so may be a stupid way of wasting money and precious natural resources. On the contrary—as I learned recently in the project Krassler—you might consider replacing only the rubber strips, called "refills."

I totally hope that older people in our audience will email me, saying how stupid I am writing about windshield wiper refills. "Who doesn't know about this?" They would joke without realizing that, in fact, many people don't. When most people arrive at the store to replace their chewed windshield wiper, they usually see a large selection of wiper blades. You know, these things:

Have you ever wondered why you want to replace the entire blade? This is not like metal wear. I mean, sometimes it will deform a bit and the paint will come off, but in most cases, people will replace the wiper because the rubber strip is a bit torn. So why not just replace the failed content?

As far as I know, this was more common a few years ago, but now people tend to just buy new blades, metal casings and all products (although some people prefer beam blades like the one below).

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The flat/cross-beam blades shown above have become very common in the past ten years and are not made to replace rubber bits, but old standard wipers.

These are usually metal, and-as the auto parts supplier Champion writes-connect a single "central bridge" to the rubber strip via "hinged links." These links create four to eight pressure points to Helps the spring in the wiper arm to exert even pressure on the windshield. You may be very familiar with this type of wiper, as shown on the left side of the figure below:

I had to replace the back beam blade on the 1994 Chrysler Voyager (shown at the top of this article), but when I first saw how my arm was set up, I was a little worried. The problem is that my blade has an integrated cleaning nozzle, which means I know I can’t just walk to a local store in Germany and buy a new blade. "Oops, I have to order one from eBay and wait another week," I said loudly.

"Uh, just replace the rubber," my mechanic friend Tim told me. "What?" I asked. For some reason, I never thought about this idea, maybe because the wiper components are too cheap now. "Yes, I will order a new strip." At least tomorrow you will be ready for inspection," Tim continued. He called the store and ordered the parts.

He doesn't just choose a standard part to cut into the right size, although he can choose. Instead, I measured about 45 cm of wipers, and the store ordered the closest size.

The next day was one of the Enlightenment Movements. Tim showed me that all I had to do was use pliers to pull out the two long metal strips that held the wiper in place. You can see how the metal strip fills the gap of the rubber in the picture below, press the rubber tightly on the metal wiper "claws" to hold everything in place.

Slide the two straps out, and the soft, now unframed rubber sheet will be pulled out of the claws.

Slide a new wiper "refill" into the claw, and then push the two strips until they reach the "stop" in the refill (shown below), and you're done. If you have a good set of fine-nosed vise, it will take up to two minutes.

According to Trico, the wiper blade company, the price of only replacing the pen core is only half the price of replacing a complete blade. As a certified cheap bastard™, it’s no surprise that I fully agree with this cost-saving approach:

I have to say that in addition to saving costs and environmental benefits, replacing the wiper refill is also satisfactory. I do not know why. But it just. Have time to try!