One of the few complaints I've had with the X since purchasing it more than three years ago is the rear wiper. It didn't actually clear any water/snow/muck from its entire swept area. This is a problem in Colorado after a snowstorm (which we've had plenty of this year). I've noticed this as a problem on just about every Excursion in town. I've tried every wiper on the market to no avail. Finally, today I figured it out and fixed it. I purchased a NAPA Innovision wiper for the rear. It's one of those new-fangled wipers that has something like 52billion contact points and is micro-thin. It is very curved when not contacting anything. I put it on the truck and only the very outsides of the wiper contacted the glass. Looking at the setup, I finally realized there wasn't enough spring pressure to push down on the center of the wiper. I took the wiper arm off, bent it in the vise, and voila! The wiper clears the entire area for the first time!

What worked for me: Take the arm off and put the end with the hole about 2" into the vice. Gently bend the arm so it bends in an arc. I don't know how to explain it except to say pretend the glass is the ground and the arm is the St. Louis Arch. You want to make the bases of the arch just a tiny bit closer to each other to increase the amount of tension the spring is under and thus putting more pressure on the wiper. It doesn't take much of a bend to make this work. It's not even noticeable to the eye.

Sometimes brute strength and ignorance works!

 

Mine does the same thing to. Hope this helps. Thanks for the interesting post. I just thought it was the wiper, just never go around to changing it.

 

Hopefully it works. I'm very happy to be able to see out the rear window when driving on nasty roads.

The thing that really got me thinking it was the pressure was my Jaguar. I tried the new NAPA wipers on it first, but same problem - no contact in the middle. (The springs on my 31-year old arms on the Jag are not too strong.) Since the blade was the same size as the X's rear wiper, I decided to give the blade a whirl on it. (I swear I've tried every possible wiper in the world on the back of the X to solve the problem.) I'm very **** about wipers and lights -- I guess I like to see where I'm going - and now where I've been.

I also recenlty put a set of Sylvania SilverStar Ultra lightbulbs in the truck and what a difference! I always hated driving the X at night because the headlights were so weak. (I'm also used to the Jag's (non-road legal) Euro-spec 7" H4s which put more light on the road in a superior pattern. I always thought the high end bulbs were just hype, but the SilverStars actually make good on all the claims they put out a nearly pure white light. And, they're not those stupid blue ones you see on all the slammed Hondas!

 

Mine cleans the center very well, my problem is the very top are of the window. Theres a small section it doesn't get at the top of the sweep. Id say 85% of my window is cleaned on the first or maybe second swipe of the wiper.

 

mine stops part way through the sweep instead of making a complete pass.

 

Mine cleans for the most part, except for the monster "Ski Doo" decal along the top of the back window.