Winter Screen Wash

I have no problem with the cost. I bought the stuff that you were supposed to dilute and it froze before I diluted it.

Find the right code and it's 6 ;-)

I usually order enough to get free post but there are other suppliers.

On 2010-12-21, Nightjar

Buy it from "thermalkit" on eBay and it's £5.30/litre, including VAT and P&P.

But thanks for reminding me I needed some.

Meths and you could drink what.s left.

The asda stuff works quite well as far as icing goes, if only it cleaned the muck off.

with alcohol or even water evaporation, make that -25C.

Driving across Germany in freezing fog, stopped and found that not only had the washer frozen, but also the aerial had 1/4" of ice on it - the

The washers started after the car had been in the service area for half an hour but the nozzles froze within ten minutes of being on the road again.

Its not suitable for washing at 70mph on a salt laden motorway throwing sub zero brine on the windscreen, though.

A bit OT, but just wondering...

Does your calendar have any days called 'Throwing Copper' or 'Lightning Crashes'?

TF

Ditto... and when I checked a couple of hours ago the reservoir was frozen solid. It's neat or as near as dammit as there was very lttle left in the reservoir when I topped up.

It says on the container that it doesn't freeze until -15 deg C. It's only -5 deg C right now and the car has been sat in the sun all day.

I just added added a few glugs of IPA as I have many gallons of it available :)

Where do you buy it from? I asked for it in Boots and they gave me the 'are you an alien' look. I'm assuming you don't mean the IPA you can get in the pub :)

Dave.

If it works at all, it'll work fine.

They don't care. They measure optical rotation (i.e. polarisation) of the solution. If the solution rotates light at all, it'll follow the same law that rotation is proportional to concentration, times a constant for the chemistry. So you'll need to calibrate it for glycol to know what the absolute concentration is, but it'll woirk OK in arbitrary units for telling that one brand is twice the concentration of another.

I had one in the '80s - bloody marvellous thing and I swapped it across several cars, until it was defeated by a mid-engined Lancia Montecarlo. Washer jets didn't freeze up so much then either, because bonnets didn't have sound deadening to insulate them.

I was driving the Honda Jazz at the w/e and that was horrid in the snow. Apart from its tiny roller skate wheels, it also froze its washer jets solid. Can anyone recommend a useful source of heated ones, or am I bodging at it with wirewound resistors and epoxy?

Nor the purple dye. If you're wood finishing with it on blond wood, you need to avoid the dye. I used to buy it stenched but undyed, but that seems to have disappeared now. I don't know why - you can hardly claim that being purple will stop kids drinking it, when they're happy to chug down blue WKD.

I've taken to adding a kettle full of boiling water to the screen wash first thing on a morning to at least give it a warm start.

We've had overnight air temperature lows of the -10C range for most nights since the 16th with daytime highs not much above -5C. Washers worked OK yesterday, haven't been out in the car today. Remember that the tank/pipes etc are tucked away sheltered so will tend to stay a bit warmer than the actual air surrounding them.

International Pale Ale? surely that is an expensive way to lower the freezing point?

The aniline IS the purple dye, fathead.

If you're wood finishing with it on blond wood,

That's with methyl alcohol as well as ethyl. aka surgical spirit, rubbing alcohol and industrial alcohol IIRC..

It's India not international.

Anyway I used C3H8O which is good to about -90 deg C, it's made bugger all difference to the washer reservoir though despite it being in there a few hours.