Windshield washer fluid has long been a pet peeve of mine.
For many years, the size of the reservoir in your car and the size of a jug of washer fluid would not match. You would try to fill the reservoir, but always have a little bit left over. Not much. Just a little. Enough so you would put it away somewhere, forget you had it and before long you would end up with several jugs with about half an inch of fluid in the bottom of each one.
You might think you could just pour them all into one jug. But in some sort of weird subset of Murphy’s law, you would never find the partial jugs at the same time. You would only ever find them one at a time so you couldn’t collect all the bits into one whole.
For a lot of vehicles these days, they have enlarged the size of the reservoir. Now you can likely get a whole jug in there. If you have really steady hands and the wind is blowing the right way.
By some strange combination of making the space smaller and putting more things in there, the space around the engine of your average vehicle is limited. If squirrels were powering your car they wouldn’t have enough room to stretch their arms while taking a break. Everything is jammed in there, with little room to move.
In order to pour anything in this space, you either need a very steady hand or a large funnel. I don’t have a steady hand. I may have a large funnel, but it is probably sitting with one of those old partial jugs of washer fluid. I would have no idea where to find it. Particularly in the 30 seconds I generally allow myself to top up the washer fluid before heading out on the road.
It doesn’t matter how carefully you pour, you will still spill a good portion of the washer fluid. So even though you now have a reservoir that can handle the amount of fluid in the jug, it is pretty much impossible to get all the fluid from the jug into the reservoir. The shape of the jug will not allow for a smooth pour from a distance and there is no possible way to get the jug close to the opening for the reservoir.
Matching the two is just never going to happen. I swear, it’s a plot. A plot that has been ongoing for years just to frustrate me. And it works.
