Quote:
Originally Posted by Overdrive
I never did follow up on this thread after I brought up that issue I ran into getting replacement inserts at a dealer away from home. In short, the guy at that dealer was full of sugar, honey, ice and tea (it was in the south after all, where sweet tea is often a staple...maybe he was delirious from insulin shock). I inquired at my usual dealer when I got back home, they looked up the same part numbers Bonburner listed above that I'd been using for years, and ordered me a few sets of them, same as they always have. I did it as recently as this past summer, so the parts are still being made and supplied, no need to believe any shady parts department managers trying to sell unnecessary parts and claiming that the factory wipers are damaging people's windshields.  |
I think Toyota of America is actively trying to discourage insert replacements, but they still trickle through the normal parts distribution channels and are somewhat available.
When I still had my Corolla, I eventually gave up on buying inserts from Toyota. At least until 2009 or so, Toyota would publish a PDF detailing what inserts to use for what cars, and had a selection of about 5 or so different profiles in various lengths. I don't remember whether they offered inserts for the Denso Designer blades which were relatively new at the time, but some of the other inserts they sold were generic cut-to-fit extrusions rather than OEM rubber.
In the last edition of that PDF that I saw, they did away with all the inserts, and were only listing their Toyota sightline blades. I concluded that these are basically aftermarket blades that are sourced and distributed by Toyota of America, with a Toyota logo on them, so they can sell them as 'genuine Toyota', but they're not what came on any cars from the Factory, and do not accept any of the available inserts from what I could tell.
For a little while, was able to order inserts by the original part number, and would receive the real deal (fully molded, not cut extrusions) but the last straw for me was a time I ordered the original part number, and they substituted the wrong insert which I couldn't even use.
It ended up that I would go to Honda to get all my inserts, whether for my Corolla, Hondas, or Nissans that still had their original wipers. Every Honda dealer I've inquired at has had good inventory of the inserts I've been looking for, and never generic substitutes like what Toyota would push.
It would take a little sleuthing to identify the appropriate inserts for the non-Honda applications, but the older cars with traditional blades had inserts that are interchangeable with the NWB wipers used by Honda. Honda typically uses Mitsuba wipers now, but they did use some Denso after transitioning from traditional NWB blades (models around '07-'10). I think I've had some luck finding inserts for Denso Designer blades in the past, but there were gaps in the coverage and that need went away for me for a while, so I hadn't kept up.
For the driver's side, my next visit to Honda, I plan to check out:
76632-SHJ-A11
The 500mm blade we need was one of the gaps I'd encountered before, and I'm not having any luck finding anything from Honda now either. I'd previously needed that for a blade from an '07 Camry, and the current Toyota part number for that application is:
85214-0E140
This appears to be available for now, but it does seem the corresponding driver's side part number is not. These are rubber only. The rubber+spine part numbers that @
Bonburner shared appear to still be good, and are listed at the same price.