But there is a trace of kryptonite in Deuterium @Triedaq. Are you suggesting that the streets be made unsafe for the Man of Steel?
I saw a panel truck today with this exact problem. When the driver sprayed the windshield, the spray went every direction. It wasn’t an aim problem from what I could see. It was like the truck was enveloped in a mist that was spraying everywhere. My guess for the OP’s problem is the spray gadgets on the hood are clogged with debris and preventing a free flow of a directional water jet. Remove them and see if you can spot what’s wrong using a magnifying glass. You may be able to backflush them too, with the disconnected hose and the help of someone to press the button. You’ll have to remove the plastic tank too and clean that out, otherwise any debris in the tank will re-clog the sprayers.
Somewhere back there I mentioned drilling the jets out, @George. That suggestion was made based on several efforts to improve the spray quality that began with a plugged nozzle long ago which I was unable to match so I drilled it out and the results were quite good. Over the years I have attempted to improve the spray pattern on various vehicles and experimented with drilling the old one before attemting to match and replace it. On more than one occasion I have oversized the hole diameter or drilled too deep and replacement was necessary but often drilling took care of the problem. Out of curiousity I checked my collection of miscellaneous bits and pieces in my shop and found an array of windshield spray nozzles that have accumulated over several decades from all the various sources but that hand full of pieces indicates that I often bought several parts hoping to fiind one that worked. Sometimes it’s good to let frustrating problems just fade away. I feel sure that I would have remembered a $70 nozzle though. $70 wouldn’t easily fade away.
$70 for both. Only $35 each and they were plastic too. Its my local dealer but I don’t mind going someplace else either. When I was in there for a recall I was going to pick up a new thermostat for my G6. $75 for a thermostat. Uh, no, think I’ll wait. Rockauto was about $35 for a Delco. I hadn’t bought wipers for a while but the last ones that I got at a Minneapolis dealer were $35 each. This time I got them for $22 at a different dealer. The three other places I called were still about $30 each and not in stock. They have a special snap attachment that makes OEM a little more desirable. I didn’t even check the local dealer. Its a chance to get out on the road and make an entertainment stop anyway.
It would be kinda nice to know what the deal was with the washer nozzles though. I don’t mind being wrong if I learn something in the process.
I’ve always cleaned and adjusted them with a safety pin.
If the orifice is partially plugged, the fluid may squirt at greater velocity. Fella by the name of Bernoulli discovered that. Clearing them with a safety pin or sewing needle may just improve the spray as well as aiming it.
Or you could get fancy. You could run the squirter hose to a “Y” fitting, with a return loop the capacity of which you could control via a needle valve. Then you could adjust the pressure of the windshield squirters by adjusting the amount feeding back into the reservoir. Or I could be crazy. Or both.
Oh boy, here we go again. The other thing when you’re trying to adjust them, they may work well in the driveway but when you get out on the road with the wind, you’ve got to have enough push to hit the middle of the windshield. I had one car that would dang near go over the roof when stopped but was just fine on the highway. I spose it depends on where they were mounted. The best I think was on the wiper blade itself, and the worst mounted on the cowl. Seems like the hood mounted ones work the best. IMHO.
I’ve been behind a few cars that shot their loads over their roofs. It’s funny how our bootcamp language comes back to us at times like that.
This is an odd problem and since we’re dealing with odd solutions what about adding a potentiometer to the hot wire circuit at the washer pump and adjust the spray via altering the voltage provided to the pump.
A cheap light dimmer switch oughta do it.
Well why not just go back to the $15 squirter like my 68 Dart had? Bellows on the floor that you stepped on. Step on it hard and it squirts more. No wiring, no motor, no switch needed. Cheap and effective.
I recall that Volkswagons used pressure from the spare tire to operate their windshield sprayer. It seemed like a dumb idea to me the first time I saw it.
“I recall that Volkswagons used pressure from the spare tire to operate their windshield sprayer. It seemed like a dumb idea to me the first time I saw it.”
Trust me…it was really dumb.
More than a few uses of the washers led to a badly-underinflated tire, unless you boosted the pressure in the spare by several lbs.
However, this situation was essentially self-resolving.
The plastic tanks were not strong enough to withstand the increased tire pressure that you needed to use if you didn’t want to end up with a flat spare tire. My brother had his WW tank replaced under warranty when his cracked after he boosted the spare tire pressure to 32lb.
When the replacement tank also split–after the warranty ended–my brother opted to go without washers, as it would have been an endless situation of replacing those tanks.
Yes, a very dumb idea…
Remember this puzzler?:
Not to be hyper critical but a college student with a new VW, and that his parents didn’t buy? Plus the back roads from Chicago to Madison would have been paved and fine, not muddy and rutted. Then of course I can’t be sure if Wisconsin had an agreement with Illinois to offer in-state tuition. Otherwise it would have again been expensive for a kid that had worked and saved in order to just buy a car. I understand the need to set the scene up though just doesn’t fit my world view.
Maybe the hose connecting the spare to the reservoir was still on the tire.
And you shouldn’t let good sense stand in the way of a good story @Bing.
I was just thinking back to 1968 when I graduated from high school and owned a 1965 Valiant and had $2500+ in the bank and enrolled in the local junior college. I could not afford the tuition, room and board for even a state university at the time.
The answer was that the mechanic saw a dirty windshield as the car pulled up and knew the windshield washer wasn’t used because the now-flat spare couldn’t run it. I also remember C&C talked about a pressure regulator of some sort that prevented the spare from going flat.
Yeah the answer was obvious, it was just the set up of the story to get to the washer issue that was a little unbelievable.