I put heat to full, rear window heater on and de-ice side quarter windows and mirrors first.
I assume that the tiny amount of heat from the heater will be more useful than the advantage of having the heater matrix off to ecourage the coolant to heat quicker.
What does eveeryone else do? Heatter on or off?
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These are my own opinions, and not necessarily those of all Toads.
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Off until I see the temperature gauge rising. Also as the car is an auto gearbox, I tend to put it in 2nd or 3rd to get the revs up a bit just to get it warmer that bit quicker. If I leave it in Drive the revs sit barely above 1½ thou rpm and takes forever and a day to warm up.
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Go out to the car, start it. Turn on heated mirrors, heated rear windscreen, put heater on hot, turn blower on full, point vents at various windows. Go back inside drink one coffee, smoke two cigarettes, read Telegraph.
No sweat, no problem and a warm and clear car.
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Come back - No car!
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Come back - No car!
2 excitable and rather large dogs will let Mark know long before any scumbags get near his car...
My technique today was: Work right through the night, sleep til 1pm, hey presto no ice on car!
Normally I subscribe to the kettle method though...
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Good idea. My psychotic Springer will now be tasked to a gently heating BM tomorrow. This dog will sit patiently and quietly on the front door step, if anone approaches the Male Alpha dog's property (i.e. the Beemer), they will live to regret it.
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"Come back - No car!"
Indeed. Or no petrol.
Warm (not hot) water on windows & mirrors.
Get in turn on engine, followed by screen/mirror/seat heaters - drive off. No problem. No delay.
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Mark, I would have thought you being an insurance guru of some capacity would know better than to leave your keys in an unattended car.
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If you can get across my cattle grid, down my drive, past my two extremely large (and noisy) dogs and then get my car without either me noticing or you bleeding copiously, then you deserve my car.
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...and the effect of the fags on life insurance must be pretty dramatic.
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These are my own opinions, and not necessarily those of all Toads.
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Go out to the car, start it. Turn on heated mirrors, heated rear windscreen, put heater on hot, turn blower on full, point vents at various windows. Go back inside drink one coffee, smoke two cigarettes, read Telegraph. No sweat, no problem and a warm and clear car.
How selfish of you to pollute the planet and wake all neighbors up !
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I favour the prevention method. I stick the car under my car port so there is no ice on it all ;-) Otherwise the night before ice prevention stuff isn't too bad. It does leave an oily residue which is slightly annoying and it can give patchy results in certain weather but it does take most of the work out of scraping.
Normal method when been taken unawares by frost is to start car, put on blower, stick on heated rear screen and scrape all windows starting with side windows and finishing with the windscreen. If irritating re-freezing occurs then blast glass with spray de-icer, let it soak into the ice then scrape and use rubber blade to remove the moisture. Then get into car, shiver, put on gloves, get annoyed at breath making fogging patterns on glass. Find demister pad, wipe inside of screen usually leaving the odd smear, then sometimes discover inside is frosted over so have long wait until can see out. Then for rest of journey periodically wipe glass with demister pad when water is dripping on the dash.
Perhaps someone should invent a portable & battery powered car glass dryer that would put out enough heat to melt the ice on all the glass and dry it off thus reducing the risk of re-frosting....
teabelly
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Usually the car lives in the garage so no problems. Otherwise it's prize the door open (Probe's have a habit of freezing easily). Engine, Heater on, rear de-mist on, and scrape all windows - wing mirrors are heated so that's some time saved. Scraping order are rear passenger windows, front passenger and drivers, windscreen and rear window last. The engine is normally warming nicely by this stage, maybe the 0-40 oil helps?. Sometimes may use the aircon as this works the demist best I reckon.
If I'm in the TR then I use the crook lock to jam the accelerate down a bit so that it's revving at 2000, rather than 850.
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No-one seems to have mentioned the prevention method consisting of a sheet of polythene (an opened-out large bin-liner works quite well on a small car). Shut the ends in the 2 front doors, and tuck under wipers if poss.
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No-one seems to have mentioned the prevention method consisting of a sheet of polythene
How about cutting a potato in half and rubbing that over the windows? Does anyone know if that actually works, or is it just a waste of a good spud that could be turned into chips ;o)
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As per post elsewhere.
Heater on cold (dichotomy?), fan full on screen, aircon off, rear screen/mirror heater on. 4 minutes with scraper on outside of screen, side windows, lights (including indicators and rear lights), jump in car just in time to see temp.guage twitch above "it's not a good idea to drive me yet", switch heater to hot (that makes more sense) and off I toddle.
Those 4 minutes also help warm me up, allowing me to drive to work in shirtsleeves. I dunno about you lot, but I hate driving with a coat on.
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Did anyone hear about the recent research which suggested that you can effectively clear car windows by using cold water on them? These scientists stressed that it must be cold not hot water as apparently hot water freezes up again much faster than cold. Sounds strange but they insisted that it was right. I have not tried it myself but if you need a speedy getaway it may be a thought.
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I used to use tepid water. Immediately run the wipers and go round the sides and rear using the water and a squeegee. Worked a treat everytime (at least down to the -15 we see here in UK)
Nowadays, however, I consider the £80grand spent moving to a bigger house with a detached double garage to be money extremely well spent everytime I drive out of town and watch people scraping their cars (especially when I think I'll never have to do that again in the mornings). Sorry to gloat, but it's true.
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Cyd -
You wimp you. Fancy wasting time using a squeegee. I use two jugs of water the temperature of which varies from cold to tepid. I run a good line of water along the top edge of each window/screen. Water then runs down the length of window. Repeat if necessary. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy. Pity about the runnels in the dirty paint work, tho' but as I don't wash the car I am not unduly bothered.
Rita
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Switch on the heated windscreens and wing mirrors, then scrape the side windows (nice and quick 'cos they've got Rain Wizard on). Then get in the car and freeze for a minute or two, flick the wipers and they scrape the windscreens clear for me. :)
Not too bad but I'd still prefer a garage...
Blue
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The problem with a double garage, is that it allows more stuff to be accumulated - apart from the TR7 which has taken up permananet residence, I have a Mirror Dingy (plus road trailer) lots of caravanning gear - loadsa winterised garden furniture - and can barely shuffle around my work bench. Just have to keeping on scraping.
CS
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Cyd
dont bother with a double Garage, to de-ice windows its always best to employ a Butler/chauffeur (or both). You can even watch them from the Bedroom Window to make sure they do it properly.
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Probably get told off for this .........
Fill a 2 pint jug full of hot (but not boiling) water.
Pour over rear windscreen.
Repeat for side windows and front windscreen.
Apply de-icer to prevent reformation of ice.
Never lost a windscreen yet, but I believe they can crack. Never have for me.
And faster than scraping and/or just de-icer!!
WLJC
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These people who let their engine idle for 4 minutes plus while they scrap ice off \ pour water on windows, do they ever stop to think of the damage they are doing to their engine while it is ticking over for so long?
No ice on windows? Use your garage if you have one and get the rubbish down the tip!
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>>do they ever stop to think of the damage they are doing to their engine while it is ticking over for so long?
Nope. And I doubt it makes any difference in the scheme of things at all.
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Stick it in the garage if you have one! If it's full of junk, clear it out so the car will go in.
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Waste of good real estate - sticking a modern car in the garage IMO cars are designed to be live outside.
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Heard a joke about this kind of thing
'Only in england do people leave several grands worth of car outside, so they can keep several pence worth of junk securely inside'
Yes i know its not that funny.
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I de-ice my car either with a fan heater locked in my car for 15 mins or cold/almost cold water 5 to 6 ltrs of it. No or little strain on glass or bonded seals. Warm/hot/out of the kettle is a no no, I would not recommend running an engine at idle for long period of time from cold as the amount of condensation you generate at cold idle is undesirable and the over fuelling of the choke system generates excess water and hydrocarbons in the CAT and increased ring/bore wear due to the over fuelling bore washing. That aside your car is not insured for theft if your keys are left in it. If you are on anything like public space, car park, apartment/flats, the road, you are breaking the law and can be prosecuted for leaving the engine running with no qualified driver tin the drivers seat. As an aside, In Dundee last November a lady died whilst de-icing her car, after starting the car, note car now in neutral, she was de-icing it when it slipped down the drive pinned her against the garage and killed her. Putting the car in neutral had freed the front wheels thus the rear wheels where braked only and scraping the car rocked enough to cause the rears to brake away on the frozen drive and disaster. Bad Day Right. I do not like de-ice liquids as most tend to smear badly and seems to attack the Rain-X treatment not to mention the paint work. Saw a guy at Glensee Ski Car park pour a flask of hot water directly on his screen and you could here the crack from 50 yards away, in fact several cracks. Regards Peter
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>I would not recommend running an engine at idle for long period of time from cold as the amount of condensation you generate at cold idle is undesirable and the over fuelling of the choke system generates excess water and hydrocarbons in the CAT and increased ring/bore wear due to the over fuelling bore washing
Is this equally true for diesels?
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Yes but not to the same extent as the fuel washing is not as harse. Peter
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Groundhog day? Didn't we have this thread a few weeks back..??
I still use the 3kW blower in the car for 15 minutes. No effort, no ice, no steamed up windows, not cold when you get in the car.
Garage is full of a car needing TLC (84 Citroen Visa Convertible), and a motorbike in pieces (1929 Velocette Model U). No room for cars that can happily live outside!
Richard
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Is this equally true for diesels?
My old Rover handbook (petrol) used to advise driving off immediately, however my current Alfa one has no such advice. On the contrary, it recommends that you "do not use the performance potential of the engine until the temp guage is past the first mark".
Remember that the turbo kicks in at as little as 1600rpm on most TDs and they really like oil when they're spinning. Personally I'm quite happy to allow 4 minutes on a sub zero day, and then keep revs below 2500 until temp guage is over 50.
ND
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Yes, No Dosh, I have read that also in the Rover ones but they say it "in the interests of fuel consumption" (from what I can remember). The implication is that there are no technical benefits to idling the car when cold.
In the old days before multigrade things were different (so I have read!)
You are also right not to thrash it until the guage is past the first mark.
Billy
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Clear-spot.... I relegated the TR7 to the drive with it's all weather bag on. Leaves the dbl garage free to get the daily car in and the wife's. Thing is when I get around to restoring the bodywork I'd be loathe to leave it outside - and I can't see the missus agreeing to both spaces in the garage being used by me!!
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Sounds like this thread should partially cross over on to the existing 'Parked Car Heaters' threads, which include the Hotstart product from Kenlowe which I gather they have just upgraded (runs off the 240v mains), and the Webasto product (which incorporates a combustion-heater unit which runs off the car's own fuel, therefore works away from home, and is remote-controllable - even when *very* remote, via a mobile phone).
Both pre-heat the engine and also the car interior.
The latter is 3-4 times as expensive, a teckie's delight. As always you pay your money and you take your choice.
Oz (as was)
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Trisha TR
My TR7 is a bit unique for the marque as it is rust free and this is probably because its always been garaged.
CS
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Trisha TR My TR7 is a bit unique for the marque as it is rust free and this is probably because its always been garaged.
Not quite. the Gaydon museum have two TR7's and an estate highbrid.
I dragged my way away from the GT6's (which I love) to 'catch them out' but couldn't find any rust at all on either.
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These are my own opinions, and not necessarily those of all Toads.
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1) Leave a screen cover on overnight. Fiat do a padded one for Puntos which is excellent but it costs and is clumsy to fit. 2) Start the engine, rev a bit fast and run the aircon, if fitted, on full hot (probably wouldn't work with climate control). Takes about a minute.
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At night , put it in the garage - no ice to scrape
During the day - make sure you work at the same place as your wife, always make sure you are late coming out and hey presto, she scrapes it and has the engine up to full working temperature ready for you to step into and drive away!
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I always use and advocate warm water and have never had problems in over 20yrs...but..
Had a car in the other day with the craziest, near circular, windscreen crack you've ever seen, about 1.5m long.
Yep you've guessed it a kettle of newly boiled water the other morning. Started at an existing star chip.
ooops!
MM
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Nice can of de-icer spray. Perfect for the job as long as you don't sniff it.
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Nice can of de-icer spray. Perfect for the job......
But can ruin painted surfaces.
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But can ruin painted surfaces.
This sort of product would be tested to make sure it did no damage.
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>> But can ruin painted surfaces. This sort of product would be tested to make sure it did no damage.
Perhaps I worded that incorrectly. What deicer does if it gets on the paint is to remove any protective coating on the paint, ie Wax/Polish, thus leaving the paint open to the elements. Normally the warning on the side of the can will say this.
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Perhaps I worded that incorrectly. What deicer does if it gets on the paint is to remove any protective coating on the paint, ie Wax/Polish, thus leaving the paint open to the elements. Normally the warning on the side of the can will say this.
I see! I knew what Mark meant about the quoting! Sorted it out now.
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