Revealing Dangers Of Lifting Windshield Wipers In A Montana Winter

With cold and freezing temperatures finally making their way to Central Montana, we'll be seeing plenty of this very soon:

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I always did it before my Nissan to save the blades on the wipers.  Little did I know I was ruining the arms of the windshield wipers.

Is This An Auto Part Ploy?

At first I was skeptical.  Is this just a ploy so the auto industry can sell more blades?  Sadly, I don't think so.  Auto Zone and News 5 Cleveland both say the same thing;

• When the wiper arm slams down on your windshield, it could actually crack your windshield.  I've thought of that before, but I didn't realize the slam down was brutal enough to crack it.  After thinking about it, while it's frozen, the windshield is probably much more vulnerable.
• If you leave your wiper arms up for extended periods of time, you can permanently stretch the springs on the arm.  Once the spring is stretched, the wiper becomes much less effective at cleaning off your windshield because it isn't being held as tightly to your windshield.

Take This As You Will

A lot of us don't keep a rig long enough to worry about long term effects of mismanagement of windshield wiper arms.

I was thinking of how we are constantly bombarded with all the reasons why we should never warm up our vehicles in the winter.  I'm still warming up my rig.  Maybe its true.  My car doesn't need the extra love to run well in the winter.  This Montana girl still wants a nice cozy rig to get into.