Months ago I was driving on the highway around 5 PM so the sun was low. As the curve in the highway turned towards the west, the sun was coming into the windshield at a good angle to highlight dried spots on the windshield. I hit the wiper fluid button to wash the windshield spots but it just smeared them so bad that I literally couldn't see out of the windshield! Fortunately I was able to pull off the road into the emergency lane.

At the time, I chalked it up to having too dirty of a windshield perhaps, cleaned the windshield and never thought about it again.

Just recently I was driving somewhere at 45 mph around 5 PM with the sun low as it is this time of year. Same thing happened. Instead of washing the dried spots the wiper fluid just smeared everything. I couldn't see out of the windshield again except the areas where the wipers don't hit.

When I got home I thoroughly cleaned the windshield and the wipers, even with rubbing alcohol and let it dry for a few minutes. With the windshield totally clean, I hit it with wiper fluid and got smearing! I think that I have found the culprit which is the wiper fluid. It's too bad that I threw the bottle away after the last fill up of the reservoir but it was orange so I think it was Rain X wiper fluid. I called the company and he said "yeah, there's a few things that could cause that". Well gee, thanks. Just what every driver needs, to not see while driving at 55 mph.

He said to get the old stuff out and put in new, so I did that today, sucked the old stuff out with a turkey baster, and put in a different brand, the regular old blue stuff from Walmart. It's a good thing I only poured half the jug in there because when I looked at the blue fluid in the reservoir it had sort of like an oily film on it. That could be leftover oils or waxy stuff from the Rain X fluid perhaps. I'll see how it goes the next time I'm driving.

I did a Google search and lots of other people have had this problem with Rain X. I like Rain-X that you apply to your windshield by hand but maybe that stuff is leaving behind the dry spots that smear, but even with the windshield totally clean, the Rain X wiper fluid in the reservoir was causing smearing.