Peugeot 206 wiper blade fitting

Some of you will be thinking, "Why is he bothering with this ?" Well, there are a couple of reasons for this post. First, after a hard winter my wiper blades needed to be replaced. They were OK but only just and didn't really clear the screen as effectively as they should. Second, I heard someone at work express the need to "get a man" to change the wipers on her car. That's a phrase that always annoys me, after all if men are (rightly) expected to be able to cook, clean and look after children then the flip side is women can do minor car maintenance.

So, here is wiper blade replacement without any need to use a willy.

Step 1: Get the right blades. A Peugeot 206 has different sizes each side so you can't buy a handy and cheap set from Halfords. On the drivers side the blade is 19 inches long and for the passenger 26 inches. Please note I am talking about a right hand drive car here although I suspect left hand drives are the same.

Step 2: Remove the blades from the end of the wiper arms. Pull the arm toward you and at 90 degrees to the windscreen. The blade should slide off if you pull it along the arm towards the glass leaving a hooked metal end. There might be a tab to squeeze to make this release but finger pressure ought to be enough. Be careful - do NOT let the arm slap back or you'll be calling a nice man to replace your windscreen. If you want to be sure, a wad of newspaper where the wiper blade will normally be isn't a bad insurance policy. Also, do not operate the wipers until the job is done unless you like scratches in your vision as you drive.

Step 3: On the drivers side, the wiper blade unit comes with a couple of plastic adaptors. Use the big chunky one and hook it over the metal bar in the wiper. Then slide the whole lot into the metal hook on the wiper arm. The photo shows the job half done. Don't worry, the rubber blade will bend to allow you to do this.

Engaging your brain when doing this will mean you won't end up putting the wiper on back to front as I might have done in the past...

Step 4: The passenger side blade comes fitted with an adaptor. It caused me a fair bit of head scratching at first as I couldn't work out how it fitted to the wiper arm. Eventually I removed it from the blade as this made trying different orientations easier.

As you can see from the picture the arm goes up the middle with the adaptor surrounding the hook. Note: it's at 90 degrees to final orientation in this photo.

Putting the blade back into place I hooked the unit over the arm. It's quite a wiggle to get the thing to fit but fit it does and snaps into place nicely.


Step 5: Check the blades don't slide back along the arms - be fairly brutal here as you don't want them moving when doing 70 on the motorway in the rain. I had a blade move in the snow and it was bad enough to have to stop in a side street and get out of the warm to fix it.

Step 6: Now test your wipers. If they are fine, fire up the windscreen washer. Can you see ? Are they still secure at the ends of the arms ? Congratulations, you've saved yourself a few quid and can now replace a duff wiper at a service station in the middle of nowhere when "a man" is not available.

Step 7: A final touch is to oil all the pivots in the mechanism that you can see. While not essential, it's a good time to do it as we don't want anything seizing up in the wet do we ? 3 in 1 oil is good here, don't use WD40 as while it will clean out water and even muck, the lubricant properties for this application aren't that great.

Legal note: This is an accurate description of what I did. If you chose to follow these instructions and things don't work, it's not my fault. Sorry.