You’re a sick man, Melott! Hee, hee.
At 3-4 dollars for the top brand and maybe using 4 gallons a year per car…it’s just not worth the effort.
I can honestly say I doubt I’ve used an entire gallon of washer fluid in my life. What do people do with all this fluid? I’ve noticed washer reservoirs getting bigger and bigger in cars too. In my cars the stuff just sits there and scums up.
The owner’s manual for my '87 Toyota pickup recommends water in non-freezing weather.
So I don’t have to worry about forgetting to change it when the weather freezes I use Consumer Reports’ formula for window cleaner: 2 ounces ammonia, 2 ounces isopropanol, a few drops of dish soap, 28 ounces water. The ammonia and isopropanol depress the freezing point.
In the winter, snow falls. They salt the roads, and the snow melts into this salty, slushy nastiness. As you drive (especially as you follow a truck on the interstate), this stuff gets sprayed up on your windshield and dries into opaque salt crystals. Without washer fluid, you simply can’t see…running out of it is a bone fide emergency in the right conditions.
Shucks, in the just the right (wrong?) weather, I could probably go through a gallon just getting to Philly…
Actually, that makes ME wonder: how does scum grow in a toxic methanol solution?
Ase, you clearly don’t live in the Northeast. Or you live next to your shop. Or both. In the fall and in the spring I used tons of the stuff when I was a commuter… which was most of my adult life.
My son lives in southern CA, and I’ll probably use more window wash in December alone than he’ll use in the next five years.
Melott, I need to comment that there are lots of kids at the beach and they can be very impressionable… and they see EVERYTHING. I know you mean no harm, but it would be terrible if one of them saw you and tried drinking that blue stuff daddy keeps in the garage. I respectfully urge you to reconsider your joke of pretending at the beach to drink windshield wash.
@asemaster, I go through about 3 gallons of washer fluid a year around here. Spotty rain, dust all the time, tons of insects, and birds all make a right hash out of things as the Brits would say.
Wintertime is no better with slush and the always present dust which mixes with it.
You can’t even begin to keep the inside of a house clean due to dust. The interior can be surgical room clean on Sunday and by Friday will look like it hasn’t been dusted in years. Even worse living out in the sticks with plowed farmland everywhere and wheat chaff/dust in the air both from the fields and from the vents of the grain elevators when the drier motors are running.
In my case it’s the salt, sand, and slush. It gets so bad that when the sun finally comes out and the salt on the highway dries, you can see white clouds of salt following cars on the highway, having been thrown in the air by the tires. 18-wheelers look like they’re traveling in an enormous white cloud.
I use a LOT of WW fluid in the winter months as a result of road salting.
However, I also use a fair amount during the warm months, as a result of bugs.
If you use your wipers (with a copious amount of fluid) on bug splats as soon as they form on your windshield, you can reduce visibility problems to a great extent.
I can recall driving my first car with windshield washers (my father’s '66 Galaxie 500), and the WW fluid reservoir was a rubberized bag which held only 1 qt. In those days, the washers tended to spray gross amounts of fluid in one big stream, rather than the misting action of modern washers, and because of the small capacity of that reservoir–coupled with the way that the WW nozzles wasted a lot of fluid–I can recall using up an entire qt. on one drive of about 50 miles, following the application of a lot of road salt.
@db4690
<b>yesterday on the freeway, there was a guy driving one of those, acting like a total maniac
Quick lane change = microbus on its roof!
Actually, that makes ME wonder: how does scum grow in a toxic methanol solution?
Because washer fluid is used so rarely, the alcohol in the washer fluid evaporates away, turning it into a jug of lukewarm stale water. Last winter there was some frost on the windshield of my pickup and I thought I’d try to just use the washers to clear it. All I did was add a layer of frozen mess to my windshield.
Salt on the roads? We use sand here in Western Washington, on the 3 or 4 days that it snows. It’s always raining here though, which is probably why we don’t need as much washer fluid. Rain, mother nature’s washer fluid and it’s free.
A few years ago I noticed chemical anti-icer being put on the roads in anticipation of freezing weather. Since it contains molasses I can see why it makes a mess of the windshields. http://horsesass.org/washington-dot-screws-de-icer-industry/
@ok4450 growing up I spent my summers on a farm in Eastern Montana. You didn’t need to look outside to see if the strip next to the house was fallow or planted, just run your finger along the counter.
Why even bother? By the time you purchase what ever ingredients you’re going to use spend your time and effort mixing, trying, re-mixing, re-trying, over and over until you get results you like. You have spent enough time and money to probably cover all the washer fluid you would normally use in a year.
good job Yosemite!!!
i do the same thing when crabbing and fishing
i take my wheel barrow to carry our stuff, and i take a load of trash out with me.
not enough though, the state shut down the best crabbing spot because of the trash people left.
you would think that they would put a dumpster there, but no.
i was really mad a couple of weeks ago when i drove all the way there and found that they had erected a fence denying access.
i can tell you that i have seen that much of the trash was left by immigrants who used the area.
maybe they couldn t read the signs that said they would close the area if people didn t stop littering.
an area that has been used for generations of locals has been lost.
Can’t you put your boat in the water nearby and then go to the area?
I don t have a boat jt.
"2 ounces ammonia, 2 ounces isopropanol, a few drops of dish soap, 28 ounces water. The ammonia and isopropanol depress the freezing point. "
That small amount of isopropanol and ammonia will get the freezing point down a little, maybe to 25F, so don’t assume it’ll work in the frozen north.
I probably use one or two gallons a year. Anyone else have a problem with the yellow stuff? I refuse to use it. Don’t care how good it is. I’ve always been taught to not eat the yellow snow so I don’t want anything yellow spraying all over my cars.
Thinking back, I had a guy that worked for me that orded umpteen gallons of washer fluid so he could put an extra gallon in the trunk of every car that staff used. I said just make sure the resevoir is filled up and you don’t need an extra gallon laying around. No 45 year old lady in $300 dress clothes is going to open the hood, check the fluid, go to the trunk and fill it up again anyway. Sheesh. I’m glad I don’t have to put up with people anymore.