Genuine Honda Wipers

Generally speaking I'm not one to buy into (no pun intended) the notion of buying genuine parts for our car. I figure after market stuff works just fine, especially for general maintenance items like wipers and oil filters. Part of my cynicism stems from the fact that buying parts from the dealer costs more money, and I'm all about saving money.

Windshield wipers are a good example of this. In years past, pretty much for as long as I've driven a car, I've never purchased wipers from the dealer. What's the point? Why would I spend top dollar when I could get them for a fraction of the price at an auto parts store? I figured they would last just as long. In fact, even when I go to the parts store, I usually buy the cheapest wipers, figuring I'll just replace them every year. This will usually set me back around $10 a pop. Just last year I decided to up the ante a bit and buy higher end blades for the Mighty Fit. This meant spending about $20 dollars, which is unheard of for me. These blades looked like higher quality blades and they worked fine for the first few months, but then they started to let me down. In fact, when I was taking A home from a game up north, it was horrible driving conditions and at times the rain was bringing the visibility close to zero. It was really stressful, though I felt better knowing that we were in the Mighty Fit.

I decided at that point that I was done messing around and was going to go all out and get blades from the dealer. I figured since it was a Honda, I could trust the parts. I headed over to our local dealer, Gerrish Honda, and dropped the big bucks on blades. The parts guy knows me by now because I've replaced several light bulbs on the car. They seem to be sequentially burning out, so I head over to get replacements. I ended up spending about $50 on blades, $35 for the big blade, $15 for the small. Under normal circumstances this would have given me a heart attack, but a few things made it all A-okay.

First off, the guys are Gerrish are pretty cool. They never try to sell me more than I ask for. It's a lot like Honda care dealers, they don't need to try to sell you something that you don't want because Honda cars sell themselves. My personal feeling is that when you go to a Honda Dealer, you already know what you want. Secondly, the wipers are great. Honda is definitely a name you can trust, and tey do an incredible job of cleaning the windows. Believe me, I've gone through enough wipers to know. And finally, I learned that if you have factory blades, then in the future you can replace the rubber part of the blades for about $8. How cool is that? If I'd have known this bit of information before, I wouldn't have wasted my time and money buying the cheap stuff. Live and learn, as the saying goes, or was it you're never too old learn? Something like that.

Now we can see our way clearly, or at least more clearly, thanks for our new factory blades. Nothing but the best for our Mighty Fit, right? Unless of course it costs too much, but I'm getting better at that. Best of all, I'm no longer shrouded in ignorance when choosing thrift over quality, at least where wiper blades are concerned. I think My Mentor would approve, and I love when that happens.

Until the next time, thanks for reading, and thanks to Taras Lisachenko for the pic.