We all have our nemeses. Sherlock Holmes had Moriarty, pasta has anti-pasto, Rick Sanchez has Mr.Nimbus, David Tracy has rust and order, and I have the general sense of doing the right thing, but in autumn I have a very specific nemesis: pine needles and leaves at the base of my windshields. Back in February, I was so very cross about a related issue with this, a lone pine needle stuck under a wiper blade, that I came up with some solutions for that specific problem.
Now I realize what a fool I was! A sexy, stupid fool! Because that barely scratches the surface of the problem, which is so much worse, especially for modern cars that tend to have wipers that at least partially disappear under the hood. I know you know the problem, where the area where your wipers reside, languidly, becomes a foul nest of leaves and needles and crap, which then migrates under your hood, clogging your HVAC vents and making a mess of things. Possibly a fire hazard, too. We need a solution. Hear me out here.
First, here’s a few quick pictures of the problem. These are taken of my wife’s Volkswagen Tiguan, which you may recall is a massive pile. But this isn’t really a problem unique to the Tig, I believe most cars on the road would have the same issue, which is this:
I’m sure this is familiar to most of our readers who park their cars out under the starry skies. The design of most car wipers now is that they reside in a little trench at the base of the windshield, and that trench fills up, lavishly, with leaves and pine needles and all that crap.
In the case of the Tiguan up there, this is a car that’s daily driven, and I’d just cleaned that crap out a couple days ago. This isn’t long-term accumulation: it’s just an example of the constant, irritating struggle that makes hood-and-wiper design of cars from the past, oh, 20 years or so completely incompatible with the vast swaths of our planet with trees and seasons.
When I wrote about the similar problem in February, I was mostly just focused on my daily driver, a Nissan Pao:
The Pao’s somewhat archaic design just has the wipers out there, exposed and unashamed. And while leaves certainly do accumulate, it’s by no means nearly as bad as the Wiper Trench setup, which captures and traps the leaves and needles, letting them form dense mats of discarded plant life around the wipers and under the hood.
So what can we do to solve this overlooked yet significant problem? I think the answer is actually relatively easy, and employs one of humankind’s greatest allies: rubber.
Here’s what I’m thinking:
There needs to be some sort of rubber mat, a leaf-and-needle barrier, that completely seals the Wiper Trench, keeping it free from falling debris. The rubber barrier will meet the windshield, but not be sealed to it, and will be flexible enough that the wipers can easily push through the barrier when in use. Maybe windshield washer nozzles will need to be able to poke through the barrier. That seems solvable.
The barrier may need to be perforated to allow for HVAC air intakes to still function; and while that may limit the amount of air going in, I’m pretty damn sure it’ll be better than what those vents can take in when there’s four inches of packed pine needles crammed on them. Or, carmakers can pull air from somewhere else! Designers love their grilles, after all; let ’em put them to use.
My wife said she’d be happy with something she could lay atop the wipers when parked, and then remove when driving, but I don’t think people will want to bother with that, and they’ll just quit doing it after a while. I think this needs to be an integrated part of the upper hood. It could be sold as an aftermarket accessory, but ideally something like this will just be integrated into the design of the hood from the get-go.
Also, the rubber component should be easily removable, and treated as a consumable, since it will invariably dry out or tear or whatever, and that should just be accepted with grace from the start.
I feel like the Wiper Trench leaf/needle accumulation problem is one of those that is so widespread, we’ve all just become blind to it. But why should we? It causes real problems with wiper performance, which can be a safety issue, it clogs intakes and all kinds of underhood components, and, with EVs that have frunks, it can get your luggage all covered in tree crap.
Why should we sit by and accept this? What are we, animals? Time to get some designers and engineers to play with sheets of plastic until this problem is solved.
PERMANENTLY.
My Focus ST is terrible for this, and most other cars I work on. You can suck/blow the leaves and pine needles out, but some get down into the fender wells. Bad design to have this big gap for tree debris to get in.
OTOH my 1995 F-150 has no problems with pine needles or leaves, there isn’t a gap at the bottom edge of the windshield.
I heard Wiper Trench is playing The Scarlet Lighter this weekend.
I hated that at my last house and when I visit my parents for an extended time. I have adequate garage spaces now. Plus not many trees.
I don’t even park directly under the pine trees, and I still get those [expletive] needles all over the place. Even worse (from a cosmetic standpoint) is when they fall down into the trim — like the window seals on a WK or into that little gap between the body and the fender flares on a Wrangler.
I like this idea. Where we are, it’s not pine needles, it’s dead sycamore leaves. They pile up under there and clog up the HVAC intakes and whatever drains are under that part of the hood. Furthermore, it’s not just intact leaves, it’s everything from those to pieces of leaves to leaf powder. If you clean it out every day, then it doesn’t get too bad, but leave your car out for a couple of days and it’s a real mess. Leave it out for a week (as my wife does now that she works from home) and it’s a job to get them all out of there. I’m pretty sure a leaf blower wouldn’t work as the high pressure spray at the car wash doesn’t do the job. You have to open the hood and scoop, and it’s a pain. It also means the we replace our cabin filters about twice as often as is recommended.
It should also keep snow out of that same trench. Packed in snow is harder to clear out than leaves and needles even if it doesn’t occur with the same frequency.
My daughter drives a Nissan Leaf and on days when snow or freezing rain is expected and she’s plugged in to charge we have to throw an old towel over the charging port. On day last winter she couldn’t drive to school because the freezing rain sealed the charging cable to the car and even after freeing it the ice still kept the charge port cover from closing. I had to bust out a heat gun to melt the ice from the drain ports and clear enough room for the cover hinges to function.
Tip to EV designers – the gas filler cover is a perfectly functional design that is time tested. Please stop putting charge port behind covers in a vulnerable part of the car like on the Leaf and Soul EV (probably others too). Can you imagine trying to charge your car after a fender bender has prevented the port cover from opening? Or what if conditions keep it from closing and now you have to drive in inclement weather?
I don’t have to imagine, I’ve lived that, albeit with a gas door. My car has a locking gas door that is actuated by a button inside the car. After getting it back from a deer strike, I discovered that the plug for the button had been knocked loose (I assume from the impact) and I couldn’t open the gas door. I eventually found the manual release cable, but it was not a fun experience.
FWIW, this probably only happened because the plug was damaged, which frequently happens if you need to open up the center console because they made the wires too short and you inevitably rip the plug out while trying to wedge your hand under there to unplug it correctly. Different design error, but same result.
Gutter guards?
Just by typing this you are now on a list of nonstop spam calls and junk mail lol
I live under pine trees (fewer now than a couple years ago), and I am always amazed at how well those freaking things intrude EVERYWHERE.
Just when I think I have them all sorted, I find a bushel under my roof rack, or doubling as questionable insulation material in the engine bay. They are like porcupine quills, never come out, just go deeper and deeper.
I live on a place called Pinecrest Point. I know your pain. Stay strong, friend.
Just needs some brush strip attached to the back of the hood. Air can still pass through. Wipers can come and go with ease. Leaves and crap can’t get through.
Good call. It would be more discreet than a rubber cover, too. You could simply attach it under the edge of the hood and it would blend right in.
This is the answer. More durable, easy to clear off, no air restrictions, keeps the back of the wiper blades clean.
I use my cordless leaf blower to remove leaves and pine needles from the cowl of my cars.
When I was a child we had many a pine tree in the yard. The family car had a wiper trench and suffered the same as Torch. My Dad had a little shop vac setup to blow the area clear. He later bought a pole barn to park the cars under. That fixed it!
I’d love a pole barn!
The sad thing is that I have a 2.5 car garage with only one car parked in it! The rest of the garage is full of “stuff” and so my other 3 cars have to be parked outside in the driveway. (･⏠･)
Que the Jason x WeatherTech ad.
Sponsorship opportunities!
Ah yes, the endless pines of the Raleigh/Durham area. My car gets dumped on by those pines every time we visit my wife’s family.
I’m not a fan of the cover idea; It’ll ruin the aero benefits of storing the wipers under the hood line and all that. Instead, how about a powerful fan in each of those leaf pockets at each end of the window that runs at startup for 10 seconds?
That or maybe we look to the recent advent of the in-car vacuum. Maybe a system like that could have a shop-vac-like exhaust port you can hook a tube to for leaf blower use? Maybe in electric cars that in-car vacuum concept could be stored under the hood, instead of being used as a frunk?
Or we could just destroy all the trees.
Yeah who needs those oxygen producing carbon dioxide suckers anyways
Found the Brazilian cattle rancher!
Obrigado!
I suggest the fantastic new ‘torch-screen’ rubber cover could replace the wiper blades. The two massive blades will self-seal the wiper trench.
Alternative concept requires a secondary fuel pump and spark plug. Squirt flames into the wiper trench followed by a frantic spray from the washer nozzles.
We have rain sensors, right?
How about tree matter sensors, that trigger little lasers near the wiper nozzles that zap the leaves and needles before they even have time to alight onto your car?
Lasers are always my preferred solution to a problem too. 🙂
I only recently noticed a similar problem when working on my 05 Yaris.I’ve never seen it on previous cars.
Leaves entering the engine bay can settle on a sub shelf that houses the wiper motor etc.A LOT can build up there,and it’s not far above the exhaust manifold…
There’s no mention of the problem online so not sure how often i should clean it
This isn’t nearly as needlessly convoluted as I was hoping it would be! No canned hams or any sort of luminescent eels involved? I am disappointed.
The solution doesn’t even incorporate random rocks found on the ground. Did Torch even write this?
A couple things come to mind:
1. The brush on the other end of my ice scraper could probably take care of those pesky needles in a couple swoops.
2. I was hoping I’d never again have to think about all the needles, seeds, and leaves I’ve cleaned out of the fresh air box drain on air cooled VWs…
On my Sierra, the windshield washer nozzles are in the trench. Might be interesting come winter.
A door would work better. Just because the C3 Corvette had a troublesome version doesn’t mean that someone else couldn’t do it better.
You can do what I did Torch: leave North Carolina for the desert.
I obtained some of that magnetic sign material, cut it to fit over the horizontal vent openings on my ’64 F100 crewcab. Loose enough to allow water to flow into the vents, but keeps the pine needles out. Wipers are not hidden, so don’t have to deal with that issue.
For about $100 you can get an actually usable drill battery leaf blower; and I am sure you could find something much cheaper if your only goal is blowing a few leaves off your wipers
Haven’t read all the comments yet, but I feel your pain. Used to live in the southern pine belt for a while as a renter. No garage, car port or anything. Needles and sap were a major problem. Now in CA, I have sycamores, whose leaves are large but has sycamore balls, which are seed balls that open up and produce thousands of tiny little seeds that get stuck in everything. I have a garage but it is full of mine and my my wife’s life possessions (mostly mine since she moved my stuff out for hers), so no indoor parking at the moment.
The only issue with covering the recessed windshield wipers with, let’s call it a hoodie, is that the debris will still accumulate at the base of the windshield, so when you open the hoodie, all that crap is just going to roll downhill.
My suggestion is to have a compressor of some type that will blow the vast majority off before the hoodie opens. I would have no problem just sitting in the car, letting the compressor build up, then blowing it off before doing anything else.
No hood, no trench, no worries:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/chesnimages/48086983487/in/datetaken/
There you go: pine needle accumulation not even on the radar