squirting pleasures!

A.K.A The Best Mod EVER!

Ever since I’ve owned Deux Smurf, which is around 7 years now, her windscreen washers have been pretty poor, with each nozzle trying their upmost to squirt two jets of water somewhere in the vicinity of the windscreen. I’ve tried cleaning the nozzles and blowing through the hoses in an attempt to improve matters, but nothing worked, so I was resolved to live with lacklustre squirters for as long as I had her.

Then a few years ago on an American Toyota 4Runner Facebook page, it was mentioned that it was possible to replace the standard nozzles with those from a Honda Odyssey, additionally, they had the added benefit of having a fan spray - whereas the old nozzle shoots out a jet of water, with a fan spray it douses the entire windscreen in a large fan shape covering the majority screen with liquid.

Then Chris, a regular Mud Life reader, told me he’d bought a pair from a UK seller and my attention was well and truly grabbed. To cut a long story short, for around £16 I followed suit.

Fitting

The first thing to do after opening the bonnet is to disconnect the rubber hose from the nozzles, obviously. Thankfully neither side were difficult to remove, they just required twisting and a bit of encouragement from my thumb nail.

Next, each nozzle is held in place by two clips, and once pressed they release the nozzle from the bonnet. YouTube videos show them being released using a flat-head screwdriver one side at a time - I tried that and it didn’t work. Instead I used the pliers on my Leatherman Wave to squeeze them both together, and out they popped.

Once removed I gave the outside of the bonnet a quick clean to remove the previous nozzle’s residue, then fed the new ones into the hole which clipped into place. Both sides were as easy as it sounds.

After pushing the hoses onto the new nozzles, the next job was to adjust them.

Again, using the Leatherman’s flathead screwdriver I gently prized the nozzles up and down, left and right until I was happy with the placement of the water on the windscreen. Once satisfied I took her out for a quick spin up the road to check that the coverage was still good whilst at driving speed.

The end result is the difference between night and day, the amount of water and coverage isn’t just good, it’s actually better than a lot of the new cars I get to drive. Overall this is one of the best, and cheapest modifications I’ve ever made to any car.