OT: Car heaters and ice scraping

[Brian Gaff]

I am sure I heard somewhere that there is a secure mode where you can leave the engine running but stop access to the car using an electronic gadget fitted to many of them. As for electric cars, if you have it plugged in to charge then a high speed defrost should be possible also of course at low temperatures batteries are not as good as when warm. Also none well known fact, when you get to around

745 percent of battery charge retention each time you need to change the batteries and the companies then sell on the old cells to companies which use them as storage for the grid till they actually get down to 50 percent before sending them for recycling. All very interesting but does not help you keep the windows of your car clear. Those who have garages that are still wide enough for their cars should use them and not the road or driveway in my opinion. Brian

[The Other Mike]

Try that on a 'modern' car and you'll probably find you can't switch off the ignition part way through the wipe to force the wipers to stop vertically, instead they will continue the wipe and park at the bottom of the screen.

[charles]

On my current car - not quite 2 years old - the wipers just stop. I have had cars where they park.

[alan_m]

The problem with this is when you have a very small chip in the windscreen.

[Max Demian]

They do toughen it all. "Zone toughening" just means that the part in front of the driver responds differently to the rest.

[Max Demian]

They weren't fitted as standard to all cars. My 1972 Ford Escort L (so not the most basic model) had one stuck on afterwards.

[James Wilkinson Sword]

Yes, the secure mode is called "locking the car". All cars have this facility.

The electricity require to defrost the window is negligible compared to that required to drive the car around, so I can't see it being a problem.

Most people have stuff stored in their garages.

[NY]

Exactly. I got a stone chip in my windscreen and arranged for Autoglass to come out a couple of days later to fill the chip. The morning that they arrived was very frosty so the screen was frosted over. I scraped it fairly well, but Autoglass needed it cleaner so they asked for a washing up bowl of warm (not boiling!) water. When they poured it on, the screen cracked like a bullet-hole around the chip - luckily it was low down on the passenger side so it didn't obscure the driver's view. They had to get a new screen, which they supplied and fitted as if it had been a stone chip repair - so just a few quid via my car insurance.

Normally I use deicer, but I didn't have any this morning so I used bowls of warm water which did the trick. The main thing to remember is to run the wipers as soon as the ice is melted, to avoid the water re-freezing.

Someone was saying "just run the heater for 10 minutes". I proved this morning that this would not work in my car (a diesel, so the engine takes longer to warm up). I drove for about 20 minutes at around 20-30 mph (should have been able to do 60 but there was something ahead going very slowly) and for ages the engine temp was around 60 deg instead of the normal 90 which meant the heater was giving out barely tepid air. Normally the engine gets up to temp within about 5 mins max, but the combination of -3 deg outside and running very slowly meant it took considerably longer. I was glad that it did eventually heat up (and did so quickly on the return journey) otherwise I'd have suspected a dodgy thermostat.

[James Wilkinson Sword]

surely it would be best if it all responded by staying clear?

[Rob Morley]

If I anticipate an early icy start then I put a fan heater in the car the night before, and switch it on the same time as the kettle. We have a car cover somewhere that might be useful in the current weather (or might just end up frozen to the car).

[NY]

Several of my dad's early/mid-70s Hillman Hunters had after-market stick on heaters. My mum's 1960 Morris Minor had a stick on pad that was not heated but which lessened the chance of the window misting up (it did nothing for frost/ice on the outside).

[Rob Morley]

Back in olden times when I had a Mk.2 Escort that sort of driving was a lot more fun.

[Rob Morley]

Who doesn't put bash guards on their doors when they regularly park in a garage?

[Huge]

Or, in the spirit of diy, some carpet offcuts on the walls.

[James Wilkinson Sword]

On Mon, 11 Dec 2017 15:59:53 -0000, Huge wro= te:

I thought everyone did that. You can't put something on the doors, it'd= come off when you drove around.

-- =

Then there was the Eskimo girl who spent the night with her boyfriend and next morning found she was six months pregnant.

[James Wilkinson Sword]

Without power steering?

[charles]

During the last few days when the morning temprature is about 1°C, I find it takes my diesel about 5 minutes driving (within a 30mph zone) for the low temperature light to go out and the heater to work.

[charles]

I can remember my father putting a paraffin heater under his garaged car in the 1950s.

[DerbyBorn]

Agreed - otherwise it keeps damp air in the car and increases condensation.

[NY]

Halfords etc used to sell (and probably still sell) hard plastic door protectors which have a U-shaped cross section and slot onto the edge of the door at the point where the car is widest. Often they had built-in white (front view) / red (rear view) reflectors so the edge of the door is visible as the door is opened.

I found that they stayed on fairly well, maybe needing to be pushed fully home again every couple of months.