Anyone who has driven a car in winter is well aware that snow and ice stick to car blades or windshield wipers in winter. And if it’s snowing mixed with rain outside, the wipers generally stick together and practically don’t clean the glass.
In addition, the brushes are constantly frozen to the glass, and if you forget to scrape them off the ice, the cleaning rubber can be torn off when starting up.
Of course, you can constantly fight this manually, but you must admit, this is not convenient. And driving in snowfall and constantly stopping while driving is not only inconvenient, but also very time-consuming.
There is a solution - buy heated brushes, which will cost a pretty penny. Or you can do what I did and make heated brushes yourself.
Disassembling the wiper
I bought the cheapest frameless Chinese wipers. Which I'll sort out in a few minutes.
Unclip the latches and remove the top cover.
Next, remove all the rubber bands and metal inserts.
The wiper was dismantled into pieces.
Making a heating element
I made the heating element from a nichrome spiral.
I will select the size of the nichrome thread not by length, but by its resistance.
I'll cut a piece with a resistance of 7.5 ohms. You can take it in the range of 6-10 ohms.I think you can calculate the power and current yourself without any problems. This is the piece of twisted wire I got.
Then it must be dissolved into one core without turns. You can’t just pull it and stretch it to the sides, as it will remain wavy.
We put the spiral on an iron pin or screwdriver and pull. Only then will you have an even nichrome wire.
Making a heated wiper
We take the nichrome wire and make a loop in the wiper rubber. Using a screwdriver, press the nichrome into the grooves of the rubber band. We got one turn of nichrome directly on the elastic band.
Next, we bring the wire into the housing and make a turn in the wiper body itself and put on an elastic band.
As a result, the entire heating element will consist of two turns: one on the rubber band, the second in the wiper body.
We'll cut off the extra pieces of wire, but before that we'll measure the resistance. It will not fall below 6 ohms, which means it’s normal.
We put thermal insulation on the ends and blow it through.
Let's check. Let's connect the car charger and measure the heating time.
The time turned out to be less than a minute - this is normal.
Close the top cover. We put on the terminals and get settled. The result was two heated brushes.
Connection diagram
In the circuit, the wipers are switched on in parallel, via a relay. The plus comes from the battery.
I pre-assembled the circuit on the table to try it out.
Installing brushes on a car
This is what the wipers look like when installed on a car. The wires do not fray - everything is fine.
Relay in the electrical box.
Button in the car interior. My car is right-hand drive, so don’t be alarmed - this is not for a passenger.
Testing heated brushes in real conditions
This is how a frozen wiper cleans.
Then I turned on the heating and after 3-5 minutes the result was completely different.
So friends, who especially like to ride in winter, do it boldly and ride in comfort.
