Wiper Refills

[vintageracer]

I just went to the "Zone" to get some wiper refill's for the 68 Camaro I just bought. I wanted refill's to fit the original blades.

The Zone no longer carries wiper refills, just wiper blades. That means if you want continue to use the correct steel blades and just replace the rubber wiper you are now SOL! The reason given by the zone manager was the fact that many newer cars now have "staggered" size wiper blades, the refill packs of 2 were causing return problems and lower sales since a customer must not buy 2 different refill packages.

I drove down the street to Advanced and while they did still have refills, they did not have the 15 inch refills needed for a Camaro. I asked David who manages the store if they also were going to discontinue refills and he responded that they probably would since the Zone did.

Moral of the story, if you are OK with the ugly black new style wiper blades on your classic car, you are OK. If you want to keep the original blades and install refills you should probably buy a spare set if you can find them!

[dropit69]

wow tyhats just crazy...how about wally world ..they usually have refills..i heard that starting next year you will not be able to get aftermarket parts for gm cars. onlt from the dealer..ok hows that gonna work..

[EFI69Cam]

wow tyhats just crazy...how about wally world ..they usually have refills..i heard that starting next year you will not be able to get aftermarket parts for gm cars. onlt from the dealer..ok hows that gonna work..

It wont work. GM would have to give you the parts, per the magnuson-volk warranty act.

[hotroddr]

I think they still have some in the back of most autozones. Just buy longer refills than you need and cut them to size, it works trust me.

[dhardison]

Real hot rods don't have wipers.... One word: RainX

[Jim Nilsen]

I 2nd the rain-x and the cutting down longer ones to fit. I have seen one company that sells blade that say to cut to fit and it saved them a lot of part numbers and inventory problems.

[MonzaRacer]

wow tyhats just crazy...how about wally world ..they usually have refills..i heard that starting next year you will not be able to get aftermarket parts for gm cars. onlt from the dealer..ok hows that gonna work..

Actually as for the no aftermarket parts ,that is not true. One they dont actually have any control on Delphi since they are seprerated from GM now same as Visteon is seprated from Ford.
One of the big reasons they seperated was to lessen the negative over head to certain sections. another is that they were trying to be competetive by getting the aftermarket line more diverse and out from under the UAW cotracting.
Thanks to local union bargaining the local "Ford" plant in Bedford IN was about to close due to price/sales problems. In other words the plants aprts were way too high in production cost because some people were getting a very large wage to very low level job. I had a friend who worked there and was getting paid a very large wage to walk around and replenish certain things from a cart and he made double what Ido as a Certified tech.
Anyway that afore mentioned act makes it illegal to deny any info/parts to aftermarket repair facilities.
Most information is about 2/3 yrs out as we find, besides that is about the normal time still covered under very basic warranties.
Being in the repair buisness its getting tougher to locate info and tools but its coming along.
Besides everytime they talk about locking up repair technology and parts the aftermarket comes back and proves that the number of dealers could not handle ALL of the repairs/service required for ALL cars 5 yrs old and newer is unrealistic and actually impossible.
To think that they actually had any idea what they wanted ,here goes. In an average town (Bloomington Indiana) with 3 GM dealers to meet the 5yrs and newer service projections from all of their sale in last 5 yrs AND local influx of students with GM cars. They would have to staff on the average 23 techs and a minimum of 45 to 50 bays.
Now as for the wiper dilema try NAPA or Carquest.

[vintageracer]

I just thought it was interesting that the Zone is discontinuing stock on refills, Trico or otherwise and will only stock complete blades. It will be interesting to see if other retailers follow. If they do, this may indicate the market for refills is declining and maybe Trico and Anco will exit the refill market and only market blades. This would not suprise me as the price of single complete blades has certainly declined in the last 5 years with the influx of cheap China made blades.

I realize that there are certainly other retailers that still stock refills. However when one LARGE retailer changes their business plan on a particular item, it is driven either by market demand, retailer market changes or the supplier/manufacturer changing or eliminating manufacture of the item.

This "may" be the beginning of another change with regard to easy parts availability for our old cars. Time will tell!

[BonzoHansen]

It wont work. GM would have to give you the parts, per the magnuson-volk warranty act.

I just had to explain that to someone who told me the local ferd dealer was denying warranty claims if there was a non-ferd oil filter on the car.

[Roger Poirier]

No big deal. Order them from Year One Catalog.

R.P.

[BonzoHansen]

I think rockauto.com sells them too.

[EFI69Cam]

I just had to explain that to someone who told me the local ferd dealer was denying warranty claims if there was a non-ferd oil filter on the car.

Its amazing how many people are unaware of this law and what it means to them.

[swey00]

walmart sells refills also...