Windshield washer fluid? Will it harm paint?

Dsoto87 said:
I have to use my wipers in the morning from dew. I try not to since I hate the look a clean window with a dirty area surrounding it.



I am the same way for that reason, my windshield is currently too rockblasted to care about a little bit of wiper scarring.
 
reds4bitrurbo said:
Is it ok to use onr as washer fluid?



Leaving aside the freezing issue, I'd wonder...ONR isn't made to evaporate cleanly without drying and it seems to make dirt/etc. stick to the wash medium, which in this case would be the wiperblades :think:




AcuraYYZ said:
TBH, I've never put much thought into window marring. I've never really noticed it...



If you're ever in a vehicle with really bad wiper-induced marring, trust me...you'll notice it ;) The beater-blazer I had looked like somebody had used sandpaper for wiperblades!
 
Accumulator said:
If you're ever in a vehicle with really bad wiper-induced marring, trust me...you'll notice it ;) The beater-blazer I had looked like somebody had used sandpaper for wiperblades!



It seems like the Asian cars (or maybe all cars now?) have really soft windshields and in addition to the wiper marring, seem to be able to be scratched during frost scraping (presumably the same action...grit on the windshield being ground in by the scraper) which leaves random "swirls" rather than wiper tracks. Or maybe I just never noticed this before.
 
Setec Astronomy said:
It seems like the Asian cars (or maybe all cars now?) have really soft windshields...



Well, *all* auto glass is a lot softer these days than the old stuff we grew up with (and used steel wool/etc. on). More synthetic stuff and less "real glass". Even the '85 Jag's "TriPlex" stuff is really soft (and you can guess how messed up that stuff is after 20-some years :o ).



Even the *Audis* have sorta-fragile glass, and not just with regard to scratches/pits/marring; the driver's door glass on the S8 (replaced due to the deer-incident) comes through with a nasty streak in it's UV/whatever coating :think: We reordered it several times and *every piece* was exactly the same...it's simply impossible to get replacement glass from Audi without this irritating damage. It apparently has something to do with how they pack it for storage/shipment- contact with [?something?] reacts with the not-so-real-glass composition of the window in the same way that wiperblades often leave permanent marks on windshields. Back in the day, when autoglass was *glass*, you sure didn't have to worry about [crap] like that. [Insert usual rant about the "advances" that keep us all nice and safe...]
 
Accumulator said:
Well, *all* auto glass is a lot softer these days than the old stuff we grew up with (and used steel wool/etc. on). More synthetic stuff and less "real glass"... Back in the day, when autoglass was *glass*, you sure didn't have to worry about [crap] like that. [Insert usual rant about the "advances" that keep us all nice and safe...]



At the risk of going further off-topic, are we saying that the differences are to make the glass "safer", i.e., less prone to sharp shards upon breakage, or exactly how? In the "old days" that was done with tempered glass for the side windows (dunno about the back) and if you recall GM farted around with a plastic layer on the inside of the windshield for a couple of years (to reduce lacerations from the inner glass layer) but they gave up because it would get damaged from cleaning and mostly removal of inspection/parking stickers with scrapers.
 
Setec Astronomy- Noting that *my understanding of this stuff is far from complete/perfect*....



Yeah, today's autoglass has more "plastic" in it and less "glass". For safety and weight-reduction.



The laminated GM stuff sounds much like the TriPlex in the Jag (with the exact same issues...grrrr ).



Tempered (think "hardened") safety glass *can* shatter in ways that the more plasticy stuff won't. We recently had this happen when a shuttle-bus driver (picking us up) at a resort misjudged his bus door-to-concret curb distance with spectacular results. Actually, Accumulatorette and I were probably lucky that we weren't injured as it was a real *explosion* of glass, but OTOH it was a lot of small pieces, not big long shards, and their edges weren't very sharp.
 
Accumulator said:
Setec Astronomy- Don't tell me you read through that whole thing :eek:



Nah...I just skimmed some of it. It's amazing how some topics you can find vast info on the internet...and for this it was difficult just to find any record of it, forget about finding anything about how auto glass has changed over the years (other than basic stuff about laminated windshields, tempered glass, curved glass and "auto glass isn't the same as it used to be").
 
Setec Astronomy said:
Nah...I just skimmed some of it..



Heh heh, I was gonna say....and yeah, that is funny how there isn't a wealth of info on this subject. Must not hit some [individual's] hot-button the way...uhm...[other topics] always seem to.
 
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