Wiper blade size: 18 or 20?

[PAExplorerXLT]

For the 98 Explorer XLT, the book says 18" but when I went to change them I realized what I have on are 20". 18" seemed short so I went with 20". Are the stock wiper blades really 18''?

 

[toypaseo]

The OEM ones on my 96 are 18", but I run 2000 F150 OEM blades that are 19"

 

[Robman]

Bigger the better unless they start hitting things.

 

[PAExplorerXLT]

20s fit just fine on mine.

 

[AWD Expy]

20s fit just fine on mine.

I went to buy blades. The counter guy looked it up and said 18". I bought those, and they weren't even close. 21" are what's on there, and they don't hit anything up or down.

 

[koda2000]

18" is what's recommended. I see no reason to use anything longer. Is an extra inch of wiping on each end really gonna do anything for you? My only concern with using a longer blade (other than them hitting anything) would be extra stress on the wiper motor, but perhaps that's minimal. JMO.

 

[German Engineer]

I put 21" on mine and they fit great. I'm tall and I really like being able to also see through the top part of the windshield. One of the first things I usually do when I get a car is put bigger wipers on it.
Our 2nd gen Explorers really have ridiculously small wiper blades. The one for the rear window on the hatch is laughably small. Every mini cooper that could almost fit in the trunk has lager wiper blades.

Forget all the stories about stress on the motor or the mechanic parts, as long as the blades don't hit anything an inch or two more or less than the original design is absolutely negligible. (What really stresses them is using them as "snow plows" when the windshield is full of snow and frozen up and even that won't really kill most wiper motors if they're designed right. I did bend a rod on an old French car once though when doing that with over 4 inches of snow on the windshield - and it was easy to fix.)

The more and the better you can see, the safer! that out weights anything else by far. Especially if you're tall. What I find actually even more annoying than the small stock wiper blades on the 2nd Gen Explorers is that the wiper on the passenger side stops almost exactly in the middle of the field of vision before it wipes back splashing the water right where you need to see most. That's completely idiotic and totally unnecessary. If I have the time and passion for it, I might sometime look into the mechanics and see if can just shorten a lever or rod to reduce the movement of the right wiper a little. It just wipes much to far into the divers field of vision.

 

[CDW6212R]

Interesting, I've never thought of using a bigger wiper, and I've bought a bunch of 18"ers for my several Fords. The Crown Vic's take a 20" I think, I recall trying an 18" on one of mine and it was too short.

The rear though you should stick with the 14" size. The rear wipers aren't the best design, people know about them running off the glass and hanging, or scratching etc. I tried a 15" on my Mercury which was the bigger of two recommended choices. The new one scratched the hatch more than the other one, so I put that on my 99 and went to a 14" size. That was 10 years back, the smaller one is much more reliable and doesn't run off or scratch at all on my two trucks.

 

[koda2000]

Interesting, I've never thought of using a bigger wiper, and I've bought a bunch of 18"ers for my several Fords. The Crown Vic's take a 20" I think, I recall trying an 18" on one of mine and it was too short.

The rear though you should stick with the 14" size. The rear wipers aren't the best design, people know about them running off the glass and hanging, or scratching etc. I tried a 15" on my Mercury which was the bigger of two recommended choices. The new one scratched the hatch more than the other one, so I put that on my 99 and went to a 14" size. That was 10 years back, the smaller one is much more reliable and doesn't run off or scratch at all on my two trucks.

After modifying the rear wiper arm on my '01 EB, I put a 14" Bosch Evolution Blade on it. It was expensive ($22) but it works well (provides 98% full coverage) has never gotten stuck in the gap between the lift-gate and the rear window glass and doesn't scratch anything due to it's basically one-piece design.

In my life-long quest for the perfect wiper blade, In general I've found the Bosch Evo blades to be the best, longest lasting wiper blades I've ever used. Expensive, but considering I get 4 years out of a pair they're well worth the price.

 

[CDW6212R]

That's good, four years. I've liked Micheline before, but there's so many brands, it depends on where you are when you think of buying them.

 

[J_C]

Meh, I think stock length is better. The only time it's critical that blades perform well for me is when it's raining very hard and a shorter blade won't slow the wiper motor down as much so you get more wipes per minute (all else equal, same blade material, age, temperature, etc).

 

[German Engineer]

Interesting, I've never thought of using a bigger wiper, and I've bought a bunch of 18"ers for my several Fords. The Crown Vic's take a 20" I think, I recall trying an 18" on one of mine and it was too short.

The rear though you should stick with the 14" size. The rear wipers aren't the best design, people know about them running off the glass and hanging, or scratching etc. I tried a 15" on my Mercury which was the bigger of two recommended choices. The new one scratched the hatch more than the other one, so I put that on my 99 and went to a 14" size. That was 10 years back, the smaller one is much more reliable and doesn't run off or scratch at all on my two trucks.

Yes the rear ones are designed really weird and I stuck with the small stock size because of that. Still my rear wiper won't wipe well yet even though I had installed a new wiper. I haven't figured out what's wrong yet, because I use them so rarely, but they hardly wipe on half of the length of the blade and leave wet spots. I guess something must be wrong with the mount of the entire wiper or something must have gotten bent. But it looks and feels firm when turned off. Someday I'll get to it.

By the way, if you or whoever else here keep buying a lot of wiper blades, you might want to consider just cleaning them very thoroughly first, before replacing them. What many people don't seem to be aware of is that often the wiper blades just need real thorough cleaning and have the black buildup removed and they work just like new again.

 

[koda2000]

Yes the rear ones are designed really weird and I stuck with the small stock size because of that. Still my rear wiper won't wipe well yet even though I had installed a new wiper. I haven't figured out what's wrong yet, because I use them so rarely, but they hardly wipe on half of the length of the blade and leave wet spots. I guess something must be wrong with the mount of the entire wiper or something must have gotten bent. But it looks and feels firm when turned off. Someday I'll get to it.

By the way, if you or whoever else here keep buying a lot of wiper blades, you might want to consider just cleaning them very thoroughly first, before replacing them. What many people don't seem to be aware of is that often the wiper blades just need real thorough cleaning and have the black buildup removed and they work just like new again.

The problem with the rear wiper has been discussed to death. The short version is that the issue is with the wiper motor mounting method. There several ways to correct this issue to a large degree, but it's just a poor design. The motor should have been mounted to the rear glass, not the lift-gate.

 

[RandomNerd2000]

People actually use their rear wipers? I just use some synthetic wax on mine twice a year and keep it clean and I never even need the wiper back there, and when it rains here anymore it RAINS. As for front wipers I've used 20" and 18", 20" work but 18" is what's called for, I found 20" to have some visible extra resistance in heavy rain, which isn't good for the motor at all.

 

[Mbrooks420]

I’ve always used 20s. With a combined 510,000 miles I’ve never had an issue with motors/linkages/anything. I live in the land of ice and snow and routinely use them to push 4-6 inches of heavy wet snow of the windshield after work. The setup must be fairly stout.

I use a 15 on the rear, I believe, but I’ve had to modify the mounts on both 98s to get a full swipe.

 

[koda2000]

The problem with the rear wiper has been discussed to death. The short version is that the issue is with the wiper motor mounting method. There several ways to correct this issue to a large degree, but it's just a poor design. The motor should have been mounted to the rear glass, not the lift-gate.

People actually use their rear wipers? I just use some synthetic wax on mine twice a year and keep it clean and I never even need the wiper back there, and when it rains here anymore it RAINS. As for front wipers I've used 20" and 18", 20" work but 18" is what's called for, I found 20" to have some visible extra resistance in heavy rain, which isn't good for the motor at all.

I rarely use my rear wiper, but for me it's more about having everything on my vehicles working properly, even it's something I don't use. It's an OCD thing. I can't tell you how much effort I put into getting my aux power port on the side of my ST's console to work and replace the missing cover, though I've never used it and probably never will. If it's there it should work.

 

[toypaseo]

Yes the rear ones are designed really weird and I stuck with the small stock size because of that. Still my rear wiper won't wipe well yet even though I had installed a new wiper. I haven't figured out what's wrong yet, because I use them so rarely, but they hardly wipe on half of the length of the blade and leave wet spots. I guess something must be wrong with the mount of the entire wiper or something must have gotten bent. But it looks and feels firm when turned off. Someday I'll get to it.

Try this: Cleaning rear wiper arm = I can see out my back window now

 

[German Engineer]

Try this: Cleaning rear wiper arm = I can see out my back window now

oh thanks I'll definitely try that.

 

[koda2000]

Try this: Cleaning rear wiper arm = I can see out my back window now

If you look straight down at the part of the rear wiper motor's spindle that protrudes through the lift-gate, you'll notice that the rubber boot that seals the water out appears to be pushed to the left rather than coming out of the lift-gate straight. This is due to the way the motor is mounted in rubber bushings, the thinness of the lift-gate's metal inner structure, the thin rubber boot itself and the constant tension that the wiper arm spring puts on the glass/wiper motor. All these things cause the motor to become crooked, which causes the wiper blade to not contact the glass in the middle of its swipe. No blade will fix this issue, no amount of cleaning the wiper arm will alleviate this issue. The 2 common fixes are to cut down the stops on the wiper arm about 1/8", or to mount the wiper motor solidly to the light-gate, which will probably make it more noisy. I have studied this problem on 5 different Gen II Explorers/Mountaineers and feel I completely understand what the problem is.

 

[RandomNerd2000]

^I have to give him credit, anybody who'd willingly study the internals of a 2nd gen rear hatch deserves a literal award, I have 2 second gens, a parts Mountaineer, and a spare hatch and I've never seen anything in there I'd jump for joy in doing. I didn't even know the hatch came with a power lock until I got the hatch for my white 2000, my Eddie Bauer's doesn't even attempt anything when you push the button.