Debris Collects in Window Cowl!

[Subcompact Culture]

Anyone else find it super annoying that so much crap gets in the areas around the window and wipers? I live under a maple tree and some pines and the needles, moss, and tree junk just fills these the crevices in these areas. I've used needle-nose pliers, high-pressure on the hose, and other methods to extract the gunk. Next step would be to fully remove the cowl to really clean the crap out.

[PityOnU]

Yeah, the same here with pine needles. I ended up getting a cheap car cover and force myself to use it as much as possible - it sounds dumb, but I'm usually feeling lazy after getting home and don't want to clown around too much in the cold. Pine sap will wreck my pain if I don't, though, so I end up actually covering the thing more often than not.

You must be able to pop that entire piece off, though. The fact that so much gunk gets under it says to me that it isn't glued to the windshield or anything...

[foama]

Its the same on most cars.

I clear out asap what I can before it gets under the plastic where it becomes more difficult to remove.
If you look at the horizontal plastic cover, you can see how to get it off for cleaning.
Even if you don't remove the wiper arms, there remains enough room to clean the muck out.
Should you take the wiper arms off, use a little anti-sieze when putting them back on, makes life easier.

[Cobrajet]

Believe it or not, it is just a little plastic cup around the wiper shaft that collects the crap. Remove the wiper arms and cowl cover and it is super easy to clean. I also get annoyed by the fact that there is no windshield trim on these cars other than the little plastic corner pieces. I get pine needles in these areas every year, and just take it apart in the spring to clean it out.

What you should really focus on cleaning out periodically is the cavity in the front fenders behind the wheels.

[7milesout]

When I go to a car wash, I pop the hood and use the vacuum cleaner on all these windshield cowl areas that collect. The vacuum (hose) pulls all this debris up real quick. It pulls debris out that you can't see too. I'm sure it's not getting it all, but it gets all that can be seen. It is quick and easy to remove this annoyance. I haven't been yelled at yet. But since I do it often, there's not a whole lot of debris there. I do this in the door jams of my truck as these door jams like to collect debris.

[Subcompact Culture]

This summer I did remove the wiper arms and was able to get a lot of crud out. Glad to hear it's not just me!

[Mark]

This summer I did remove the wiper arms and was able to get a lot of crud out. Glad to hear it's not just me!

I throw a big heavy rug over my windshield during the winter months. In my case, I am doing it to avoid having to scrap the front windshield in the morning. I just pull the rug off, start up my Mirage, & go. No remote starting for me!

If I had to park under a messy tree, I may consider the same. Depends where you live I guess. I can throw my big old rug in the garage. If my Mirage was parked in a parking lot somewhere, that would be different. I can't say a strong wind doesn't blow it off sometimes, but it doesn't move most nights.

My Forester makes it in my two car garage, but the Mirage gets trumped by my other toys like my UTV, ATVs, & even my log splitter makes it in the garage.

[Fummins]

We have a crabapple tree next to our driveway. It leaves crap all over vehicles parked in the driveway. We usually park in the garage for the most part unless I'm doing something in there. I'm probably gonna cut the tree down this summer. Less crap to clean up and more parking, win win..

That wiper cowl isn't really hard to remove. Undo nuts holding wiper arms, with hood closed fold arms up and rock them side to side gently til they pop off the shaft. I haven't had any wiper arms seize to the wiper transmission yet(on the Mirage's).

When buddy replaced the windshield in the black car I pulled out a few hand fulls of spruce needles before they made their way into the heater box. Might be worth doing if you park under crap trees.